The Other Side: An Adaptation Story
by MaxKnight1010101
Summary: Companion fic to Adaptation; will follow the same events but in a different perspective.  Chapter 3: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil  is up!
1. Mystic Square

**Author's Notes**: I actually had the idea to write this at the same time as I had to actually write Adaptation, but was unsure of whether to go for the third-person or to tell it from Marisa's perspective. I'm more or less satisfied with this, and of course this is only the first chapter; there's much more to tell here, since it's supposed to be talking of the same events as happened in Adaptation, but from a different perspective than what you'll have originally read in the other story. Please don't hesitate to let me know what you relly think about this, and especially let me know if you think I got anything wrong. I feel that maybe I shouldn't have gone into that much description of the danmaku patterns towards the end, but I suddenly got it in my head that I wanted them to be as descriptively close to what you would actually experience in the game.

Funny how I can write a full 6,000+ word chapter about something that only took a few paragraphs in the other story...

**Disclaimer**: Touhou Project is owned by Team Shanghai Alice, whose sole member is ZUN. I own nothing of this except the words of the story.

* * *

It had been a day like any other of recent memory. Gensokyo had been peaceful for a couple of months, with no youkai attacks more dangerous than a fairy ambush along the road. Reimu spent her days in that infant summer sweeping the Hakurei shrine and drinking tea. Marisa, on the other hand, was hard at work.

At least this is what she would tell you she was doing if you found her. She always tries to come up with new forms of magic, but _how_ she tries is what can be confusing. She loves books and tries to get her hands on as many books about different kinds of magic as she can, but a full understanding she has not. Many times it was described that she needed some kind of fuel or catalyst for the spells and potions she wanted to try, but not knowing how to get her hands on the things described she is forced to improvise with the most abundant resource of the forest: mushrooms.

Yes, the Forest of Magic (for that is what the humans of the Human Village have named it) is full of all kinds of different mushrooms. Being a thick forest, there are many places that are isolated, making the environment perfect for their growth: cool, dark, and damp. Many of these mushrooms are poisonous, though, and as such it is never recommended that you eat a mushroom you just found, unless you know precisely what you are doing.

Fortunately Marisa doesn't pick them to eat them. Being a magical forest, the flora and fauna have absorbed much ambient magic so as to make even the lowest of plant life have some alchemical value; at the very least the magic can be siphoned or squeezed out of it in one way or another. It is for that reason that Marisa even lives in the forest: easier access to the fuel for her magicks.

But how does she do it? The precise method is unknown, but she has been heard mentioning that she boils them to some consistency. Beyond that nobody knows how she's using them. As for why it was necessary to describe all of this? Why, for her motivation, of course!

As mentioned before, Gensokyo had been peaceful for while, but on this day, that changed. All over, an infestation of youkai and fairies suddenly appeared, causing a certain Shrine Maiden to venture out, riding on the back of a flying turtle. She followed the stream of invaders to a cave on the far side of the Forest of Magic, which invariably meant a meeting with a certain meddlesome witch.

Now it should be said that Reimu and Marisa are no longer enemies, and in fact you could almost call them friends, should the definition of friend stretch to mean that occasionally Marisa goes to the shrine to get free food and tea and bug Reimu about nothing in particular. Still, Marisa is the only company that the Shrine Maiden ever seems to get, as humans rarely venture out of the village due to the wild youkai. In fact, it is exactly because she doesn't get visitors that she refuses to go to the Human Village, either.

Now Marisa had noticed that something was off, as she had to go put down a number of fairies that had torn through her part of the forest and were interrupting her studying, so when she noticed that Reimu was passing over and engaging a somewhat minor looking youkai that didn't take very long to beat she decided to find out what was up.

She was about to mount her broom and take flight when she suddenly realized she forgot something in the house. Rushing in, she found it stashed in with where she stores her futon during the day: a rather small looking octagonal block of wood with markings at each side on one surface. She took off her hat and stuffed it into a pocket that she made specifically for this object.

By now you may be curious what this object is; we'll just leave that for later, though.

Leaving the house and taking off after Reimu, she accelerated until she was just behind her, shouting, "Hey, Reimu! Wait up!"

Reimu rolled her eyes, and the turtle, named Genji, cringed. He didn't necessarily mind the witch, since at least she was willing to try to be Reimu's friend, and he so wished she would find some friends that would care about her, but her appearance usually meant trouble. Reimu guided her ride to turn around and said, "What now, Marisa? I'm kinda busy trying to figure out where these fairies are coming from."

"I'll come with you!"

Now Marisa was an incredibly cheerful person in general. It wasn't that she couldn't hold grudges against people, but you would have to have really done something to piss her off in the long term, such as severely hurt someone she cared for, or ruin one of her magical experiments that was unfinished. Now currently that meant the youkai and fairies that had suddenly appeared.

Reimu looked unimpressed with this, but wasn't about to turn down help. "Alright if you can keep up, feel free to join in." She turned Genji back in the direction she was originally going and started flying off.

Marisa willed her broom forward and caught up to her companions. "So, where are we going, anyways?"

Reimu gave her a sideways look. "Makai, according to that last youkai I just took down."

Marisa's face lit up. "Makai! I've been there before!" Not adding what she immediately thought with it, '_There's mushrooms and magic I can steal from there!_'

"Oh, so you know the way?"

The whole face lit up thing went away at that. "I, uh… that is, um…"

The Shrine Maiden failed to hold back a giggle. "So we're just going to trace these fairies back to where they're coming from, and take them down while we're at it."

Marisa nodded and sped up, casting magical stars and missiles all around while Reimu threw amulets and needles at the ones that got past the witch. Marisa was at a slight disadvantage when facing numerous opponents in an open field, as her attacks seemed to concentrate more. Reimu, on the other hand, tended to attack in a wider pattern, and even had homing amulets which helped clear out enemies that weren't always in her direct line of sight.

It was still mid-morning by the time they reached the cave. It wasn't the way that Reimu got into Makai the first time she went, but then nobody knew of that particular incident, save for Mima, of course. The Hakurei Shrine had been destroyed, and Reimu took it upon herself to find who had done it. She descended first into Makai to find the culprit, but when that failed, she changed course and headed into Jigoku, which is where she met Mima for the first time. While Mima claimed to have no idea who had done the deed, Reimu still punished her for it. Actually, she punished every being that she came across for doing it, even though very likely none of them actually wronged her.

This stoked Mima's ire, and she escaped Jigoku into Gensokyo, took an aspiring young witch as an apprentice, and proceeded to destroy Reimu's shrine. She claims justice; she also claims Gensokyo is hers to rule, but nobody takes her seriously about that anymore. Having been punished once again, Mima swore not to cause trouble again, and has been true to her word. Now she's simply taken up residence in the shrine, occasionally bugging Reimu and entertaining Marisa when she visits.

Of course, knowing all of that didn't prepare either of the two traveling companions for seeing Mima and their previous nemesis Yuuka waiting for them at the gate.

"Lady Mima!" Marisa exclaimed.

Now of course it was Marisa that studied under Mima. She was only formal when speaking Mima's name to her face, mostly out of respect, though you can tell how far that respect can be thrown by the fact that she is just "Mima" when she's not around.

"Ah, my dear student; it's about time you showed up." Mima said calmly. She turned to look at Reimu. "And you brought my Shrine Maiden, how delicious."

Reimu made a face. "I'm not _your_ Shrine Maiden. Now I know what you're probably doing here, but," she turned to face Yuuka, "what are _you_ doing here?"

Yuuka grinned and twirled her umbrella. "Oh, you know~."

Marisa almost giggled when she saw Reimu's eye twitch a little at that.

Mima faced the other three and said, "Well, now that we're all here, who wants to do the honors of knocking on the door?"

Yuuka turned to look at the young youkai exterminators and said, "Why not let them do it? After all, they _are_ very good at gate crashing." A look that could only be described as dangerous flashed over her face.

"Ooh, there's something I've been wanting to try!" Marisa said while urging her broom towards the gateway. She took off her hat and reached into the pocket, revealing the little wooden object. Replacing her hat, she held her hands in front of her, side with the markings pointed towards the boundary between Gensokyo and Makai and focused a portion of her energy into it. It started to glow shortly before a narrow but moderately powerful laser blasted forth.

A moment later, a hole about 5 feet in diameter was left, allowing passage into Makai.

Everyone stood in awe, though Yuuka was a little peeved at the display; it felt like one of her own moves, something she likes to call Master Spark. Mima shook her head and held out her hand, saying, "What is that device? Give it here, dear girl."

Marisa hugged it against herself. "No way, ze; Kourin gave this to me, and I ain't lettin' anyone have my Mini-Hakkero."

Both Mima and Yuuka's eyes widened at that statement. Mini-Hakkero! That was supposed to be an ancient artifact of great power, able to amplify the magic of whatever individual used it. No wonder she didn't want anybody else to have it.

Marisa stuffed it back into her hat and said, "Well? Are we going, or aren't we?"

Reimu, who had been completely unimpressed with the declaration of what that object was (mostly because she had no idea _what it was_) flew into the gap in the barrier and said, "Come on; it's time to teach these guys that you can't invade Gensokyo."

Marisa shrugged at the other two companions and followed after the Shrine Maiden. Yuuka started to follow as well, but Mima stopped her. "Why are you here, anyways?"

Yuuka shouldered her umbrella, winked, and said, "Oh, you know~." She then proceeded to fly through the hole.

'_We'll have to watch out for her._" Mima thought to herself. She summoned her staff and followed behind the rest.

* * *

Reimu had a bit of a lead on the others as they entered Makai. This actually worried Genji, because as much as he didn't like the idea of working with Mima and Yuuka, he did know that going alone into Makai was not exactly a smart thing.

"Reimu, you do realize that this is Makai, the Demon World? Was it wise to leave the others behind?"

Reimu was more or less indifferent to this, though. "It's not my fault if they can't keep up; I just want to get this over with as soon as possible and get those foreign youkai out of Gensokyo."

They continued on until they could see something that very remotely looked like a city in the distance. Before either of them could comment on it, a somewhat young sounding voice shouted out, "Stop right there!"

So they did. Flying towards them at a moderately fast speed was a girl who looked to be about ten years old. Reimu remarked to herself that she looked human enough, which was odd since this was Makai and it was taking a portion of her spiritual powers and protections just to survive the atmosphere.

The girl had two objects that looked like fairies flanking her, but they didn't appear to move like fairies. Closer inspection would have revealed that they were dolls, but Reimu had no clue of this. The girl pointed and in a belligerent tone said, "You! You're the one that broke the gate, aren't you!"

Reimu pointed to herself with a questioning expression and said, "Me? No way, you've got the wrong person." Marisa just happened to show up and stopped next to Reimu. Seeing her opening to avoid a little trouble, Reimu pointed to her right and said, "She's the one who did it; blame her."

Marisa was stunned for a moment; it wasn't that Reimu never shifted blame about something to anyone else all the time. No, this was quite typical, it's just that Marisa usually knew _what_ she was being blamed for beforehand.

She held her hands up and said, "No way, you've got the wrong person."

This was apparently not the right thing to say, because anger and annoyance flashed across the girl's face. "**Go away!** You're not wanted in Makai!" She started firing danmaku patterns, both using her own magic and firing through the dolls on either side of her. The pattern was simplistic, but there was some volume to it. Still, Reimu and Marisa were professionals and knew how to avoid this without too much trouble. They dodged and grazed for a short time, firing back in an attempt to break her spell. The girl appeared to have trouble dodging properly, though, and only very barely was able to avoid being hit multiple times.

Yuuka and Mima showed up not long after this started. The fighting paused and the girl shouted, "Not more of them… What is this, an invasion? Get out of my home!"

Mima smiled and said, "My, you girls sure know how to start trouble. Please save some for me."

A laser suddenly grazed past the opposing girl. Everyone turned to look at Yuuka, who just looked amused at the situation. "I've done my part; it's up to you to finish this."

Marisa looked at the sunflower youkai and thought, '_Geez, she's kinda lazy, though. This must've interrupted one of her naps, or something…_'

The girl, now fuming, said, "Stop ignoring me! Go away!" Mima chuckled inwardly at the girl's contradiction.

Another burst of danmaku from the girl, only this time the fairy-like dolls had a different objective; they formed a barrier between them to protect their companion from frontal attacks. One would think this would leave her open from the other side, but she compensated for this by using an actual bullet curtain to keep everyone on one side of the barrier. Try as they might, none of the three that were participating were able to penetrate the barrier, though they certainly dented it quite a bit.

"Ugh, this is annoying…" Reimu said. She glanced at the other two and saw them seeming to try to coordinate attacks while streaming several layers of bullets. An idea popped into her head after that and she navigated closer to the curtain that was keeping them from getting to the girl's backside. "Barriers are supposed to be my thing… Let's see how you like some Homing Amulets!" And so she tossed them in such a way that they flew first behind the curtain, and then homed in from the other side, finally breaking that particular spell.

The girl looked about ready to cry, but she continued forward into another spell pattern, but without the shield she was soon dispatched. Reimu flew past, feeling satisfied that that was another one down and out. Mima smirked to the girl and followed behind. Yuuka yawned for a moment and smiled gently at the now sobbing puppet-girl, though a gentle smile from her actually made you want to squirm because it actually looked like she was about to gut you. Her cries intensified at that, and Yuuka flew onward, satisfied.

The girl looked up at the remaining invader and saw her grin and shrug before flying off on her broom. Unable to comprehend this, the girl dried her tears as best she could and flew off in a different direction which led to a faster route back to the castle.

* * *

The four heroines (for that is what they more or less regarded themselves as) were finally together as a group as they flew over the ice fields on their way to the castle in the distance. Yuuka detected the harmful atmosphere of Makai and had to wonder at something. "Little witch? How are you surviving this miasma? This should be quite poisonous to you." She didn't ask Reimu, figuring it had something to do with her talismans and whatnot.

Marisa looked mildly confused for a moment before saying, "Oh, I've been here before." The sunflower youkai blinked in response to this and decided not to further question her on the matter.

"Hey, there you are."

The group stopped and two girls that looked to be about the same age as Reimu and Marisa (maybe 14 or 15) appeared in front of them. They were somewhat similarly dressed to one another, vaguely looking like witches, only one was in black and the other in white. The white witch appeared stoic, but not uninterested, whereas the black witch simply looked excitable. It was the black one that spoke.

"You're the ones that caused all that destruction and hurt our little sis; stop being so violent."

"…" The white witch nodded in agreement.

"But violence is so much fun~!" Yuuka replied. She turned to Marisa and said, "Little witch girl, care to try that laser of yours again?" She pointed her umbrella towards the black witch.

Marisa nodded eagerly and quickly procured the Hakkero device from her hat, pointing it forward and concentrating. Yuuka timed the girl and charged her own Master Spark accordingly, and they both released at the same time, sending the girl in black sprawling backwards.

When it was over, the girl looked a little worse for wear, but not completely out. She said, "Hey, that's not fair! I wasn't ready!"

Marisa ignored this and said, "Hey, I want a black and white witch costume; think I could take your costumes after we beat you?"

The black clad girl puffed out her cheeks. "Don't ignore meee!"

The two girls in opposition began their attacks; the one in black used a more random pattern of fire bullets which were a bit more difficult to dodge, while the one in white used more focused and homing ice bullets. The four had split into pairs to take on each of their enemies; Reimu got herself teamed up with Mima against the white witch while Marisa and Yuuka continued to attack the black witch.

As Mima is quite simply the fastest of the lot, she had an easy time dodging around the ice bullets in order to get clear shots in, while Reimu relied on her Homing Amulets to actually hit the target. On the other side of the field, while Marisa still shot out her stars and magic missiles on occasion, she's come to love her laser attack. Yuuka did not fire another Master Spark, though, but seemed to be withholding some of her danmaku in order to perform a more complicated maneuver.

A bullet was headed straight for Yuuka when suddenly she split in two, revealing two exact copies of herself down to the detail. Each Yuuka pointed her umbrella to the annoying black witch and fired separate smaller lasers, dubbed Double Spark. Marisa threw in a third one that crossed at an angle from the other two, effectively boxing the enemy in. The converged the beams and she once again found herself on the receiving end of something very unfortunate.

"…!" The white witch watched in horror as her companion was blown away; she stopped her attack for a split second, which was enough of an opening to be blasted away herself. She landed not too far from the other one, and once she was confirmed to still be breathing, the white witch passed out as well.

"That was exciting!" Yuuka exclaimed. "Let's do it again~!"

* * *

The destruction was incredible; there were huge laser gashes through half of the city, and though Marisa at least had the decency to look slightly guilty, Yuuka simply looked delighted. Reimu was about to say something when Genji came to a screeching halt; standing there in front of the four was a tall woman in a red robe with white hair.

"I see you've finally decided to show yourseves."

Mima floated forward and asked, "Who are you?"

The woman smirked. "I'm-"

"Lady Shinki! Please leave this to me; there is no reason to involve your hand in their disposal!"

Another woman, looking decidedly younger than the one she had called Shinki, appeared by her side. She was wearing a red maid's uniform with a white apron and had blond hair.

The first one, Shinki, turned to her and said "Yumeko?"

"Please return to the castle and I shall handle these four."

Shinki gazed over the four that had approached her and said, "Alright; don't forget to clean up after yourself." She turned and flew off towards the castle.

Reimu was getting slightly annoyed at all the runaround, considering the one they were after was likely the one that just escaped. "So, you think you'll be able to take on all four of us at once?" Genji cringed when she said this; it wasn't that he wasn't confident that they could take down the maid in front of them, but issuing a challenge like that was rarely a good idea.

Yumeko closed her eyes and grinned; in the next instant their vision was filled with swords that seemed to have magically appeared in the space between them and the maid. They burst into action trying to avoid as many of the sharp objects as possible while keeping their eyes on the one in front of them.

Even as the previous sword-bullets dissipated, more took their place and it was getting harder and harder to navigate; the four continued trying to fire their own counter-shots towards her, but the bullets seemed to pass right through her at times. Finally, a lucky shot from one of Marisa's Magic Missiles ended the maid's spell, giving them all a breather from dodging and grazing.

Amazingly, they noticed that the maid, too, was breathing heavily, as if she had been moving just as rapidly in trying to avoid attacks as they had been. She looked to be preparing a new spell when a very wide and multicolored blast enveloped her; when it was over, there was no one there.

Everyone turned towards Yuuka, whose umbrella had a plume of smoke coming from it. She gave them all an innocent look and said, "What?"

Reimu grit her teeth and said, "That's it, no more lasers for you." Marisa chuckled at this and Reimu turned to her, "That goes for you, too!"

Mima shook her head and silently flew towards the castle, determining that the others were being a little too childish for her right now.

* * *

The others managed to catch up just in time to hear the beginning of the conversation at the castle; Shinki had said, "So, Yumeko has been killed."

"Unfortunately, no." Yuuka called out. "She was simply blasted clear so that we could get to you faster; she'll probably wake up with a monster headache, though."

Everyone stared as Yuuka in disbelief.

Shinki cleared her throat. "A-anyways, Yumeko was the strongest of my creations, so you must be quite powerful to get by her."

"Creations?" Mima said. "What are you a god or something?"

Shinki smiled and bowed. "Ah yes, now that you mention it, I am Shinki, god of all you see here in Makai."

Mima bowed as well and said, "I am Mima, god of the human world." She swiftly dodged a red amulet that came at her from the direction of a certain Shrine Maiden.

"Shut up, you are not." Reimu said. "Hey you, call back all of those youkai invading Gensokyo."

A look of confusion crossed Shinki's face. "Gensokyo? Oh, that's a civilian travel agency's doing; I'm afraid I can't help you."

Now it was Marisa's turn to look confused. "But didn't you say you were the god of Makai? Can't you make them stop?"

Shinki frowned. "I'm afraid I'm busy right now."

Reimu fumed at this declaration. "Busy? What could you possibly be busy doing?"

"Why, killing you four of course!"

Her attack was sudden and it was all the four heroines could do to get out of the way. She started with an alternating pattern of a circle of mid-size bullets all being shot at the same time at varying velocities with small gaps in the circles, and a somewhat random pattern where many bullets were shot out all at once around her. Marisa and Mima found themselves having to try to stay in front of her to get a hit in, while Yuuka could stay a little off center and Reimu chose to navigate a little further away and rely on homing amulets. This god was tough, though, and it was through the combined effort of all four of them that they were able to break this phase of the spell.

Shinki remained unperturbed, however, and started a new pair of patterns; this time it was a combination of randomly thrown knives and needles followed by rapid fire bullets that were aimed directly at where one of her opponents were at at the time she fired. This was slightly easier to get around, though, because it was easier to stream and stay in front of her. With a more concentrated attack this time, it took less time to break than the last spell.

You could tell she was getting a little angry this time, as three pairs of white wings appeared behind her all at once, triggering a barrage of danmaku in random directions. Each wing took turns firing a an arc of mid-sized bullets targeting one of the four, while larger bullets were being fired around at random. Several times the girls only narrowly avoided getting hit because they were concentrating on one only one thing. At first they thought it was a godsend to have managed to break this one.

Only not, as the four of them were herded into a small arc of space directly in front of the irate god by a curtain of bullets to either side being fired from the wings. Alternating from either side was a length of what could have been called a laser had it not slinked and slid through the air like a worm. Even worse for them was that it picked a target and directly homed in on her, and then charging straight through once close enough. Like last time there were many close calls from lack of paying attention, usually on Marisa's part.

Shinki's anger charged up to another level as the wings turned purple, triggering another barrage just like when the wings appeared. From the tips of the central wings did appear energy vortexes, emitting danmaku that resembled spear points in wide opposing circles while Shinki shot large-type bullets that were aimed directly at one target. Fortunately there were sizable gaps between the circles of bullets that allowed more room to navigate that it would have looked at first glance. Being younger and only human, Reimu and Marisa started to hang back a little at this point to catch their breath and conserve some power while Mima and Yuuka handled this phase.

It was a good thing they did take some time to recover, because after breaking that last spell came something that was horrifyingly worse; Using similar danmaku to last time, now instead of having a somewhat spaced out arc in front like with the homing lasers part, they only had a very small and crowded space directly in front of Shinki, with no room to get out of the way. The aimed shots were back, but were being fired at different angles rather than from Shinki herself. The four threw as much power as they could at the demonic god, and even thought they had broken her spell at some point, though instead of cancelling and going to a different pattern, she just kept adding more and more to the current pattern.

Four continuous lasers began firing from the wings and would cross back and forth in the areas to either side of where the four heroines were trying to wait out the attack. Again, they tried to break it and thought they had succeeded, but the volume of aimed shots simply increased, forcing more rapid movements, which Reimu rising on Genji wasn't as readily capable of doing. They persevered, though, and managed to completely break this phase.

Shinki's wings disappeared, and she actually looked exhausted at this point. She didn't back down and instead started firing twin waves of large bullets in circles around her while blossoms of the arrow-like bullets radiated out of her in their own waves, from time to time switching form to basic small-size bullets which fired in a different direction of arc than the other type. The pattern was lazy, though, and this time they had no trouble blasting through it, causing a huge magic explosion which left Shinki looking ready to pass out.

Reimu guided Genji up to the fallen god and said, "Now, call off the youkai that are in Gensokyo."

Shinki looked up at the ones who defeated her and sighed. "All right, consider it done; now please, leave Makai and don't come back."

Now satisfied (having handed out the punishment as she usually did), Reimu turned her ride around and started back off towards the border. The others started following at once, but Marisa took note of what looked like the girl they had defeated shortly after entering Makai smoldering in the corner, looking somewhere between being about to have a fit of rage and about to start crying. The girl disappeared into the castle, so Marisa mentally shrugged and turned her broom to follow the others.

* * *

The trip back through Makai could have been called uneventful, though Yuuka and Marisa continued to marvel at the destruction they had caused along the way. The border loomed, the hole they had made was still there, evidence enough that there hadn't been enough time to actually fix it, yet. Yes, it looked like a clean enough getaway… except for that figure that could be seen in front of the hole as they approached closer.

Marisa squinted. "Hey, isn't that-" She was cut off by the girl opening her book (which was a little too large for her to genuinely use on her own) and appearing to cast a spell right away. The entire world felt like it had shifted, and the next thing they all knew, they were no longer in Makai. "-that first girl we beat here?" Marisa finished rather lamely.

Yuuka slowly spun in place, observing were they suddenly found themselves. She shouldered her umbrella and said, "My, isn't this quite the illusory world… And to think that little girl was capable of this…"

Reimu eyed Yuuka critically. "You mean to tell me that this is all just an illusion?" She tossed a few talismans about and shouted, "Reveal the Truth!" Sadly, nothing happened.

Yuuka chuckled. "Oh, everything here is quite real, it's just all make believe. I guess we'll have to find the girl in order to get out of here."

Marisa whined, "That might take forever! She could be anywhere in here!"

Mima started flying in a particular direction. "She's this way."

No one had the chance to argue, since the moment Mima started flying that way, various things started to appear and attack her. Considering the fact that their captor was a child, none of them figured her for misdirection and so followed after Mima.

There was quite a lot of opposition along the way, including a giant playing card that took a little while to actually take down. This would have been much easier had they not just tired themselves out against Shinki not long ago; still, they persevered and managed to find where the little girl was waiting for them.

"You'll never escape, now that I have this book!" She shouted in triumph, as if she'd already beaten them.

"I'll be taking that book." Marisa said, with a gleam in her eye that said she really would do it if given the chance.

"I highly doubt you could, my dear student." Marisa looked over to Mima like she'd just been insulted. "That is a grimoire, and moreover, it has already chosen her as its bearer, since it's got her name on it."

"Exactly!" The girl, apparently named Alice, held the open book with one hand and held the other out in front of her. "Now let's see how you fare!" A magic circle appeared behind her and she began firing off magical fire all around her.

The girls took to dodging immediately, but noticed a pattern very quickly, as well; at first the fire would be random in a wide arc around her, but then would switch to mid-size bullets in a circle pattern and an aimed stream of fire. Regardless, the pattern was simple to dodge, as if she wasn't putting effort into the spell, or perhaps lacked imagination. The spell was broken in only a few minutes.

The next phase began without skipping a beat, and they soon found themselves regretting underestimating her; now there was a pattern of small bullets streaming out of either side of her like flapping wings and lines of aimed fire coming straight out of her. The wing-like bullets changed direction depending on how she moved and to make matters even worse, to either side of her were what looked like waves of fires, preventing the heroines from moving too far in any one direction. This was a much more hectic spell than almost anything they'd encountered in Makai, save for Shinki's next to last phase. It was sheer luck that a stray shot from Yuuka managed to break past and hit the girl, canceling her attack.

The aura of the battlefield changed from red hot to cold, and they soon found out why: the girl had switched from flame attacks to ice and snow attacks. It started with aimed ice bullets and a barrage of what looked like snowflakes, followed by circles of ice. It reminded them of something like the first phase, for the fact that it looked much too simplistic compared to that last pattern they had to contend with; with so much room to maneuver, they had little trouble taking this one down.

Sticking with ice bullets, the next pattern had her shooting out of eleven directions around her, and after passing a certain point the ice seemed to "bounce" at a particular angle. But like any static pattern, this was easy to read, and they soon found a repeating method which allowed them to completely avoid any danger whatsoever.

The girls seemed to be getting really mad; she switched gears and changed to shooting out lasers and needles at the four. Slow moving needles and aimed laser assaulted them first, followed by rapid-fire needles in an arc in their general direction. This Alice girl apparently got careless as she got madder, since the patterns were starting to get _easier_ as time went on. To that point, she continued with the lasers in the next phase by simply firing an alternating arc from left to right and back again, leaving plenty of room to maneuver. Yuuka was itching to show her what a _real_ laser looked like, but didn't feel like being punished by the Shrine Maiden again. A few needles had been thrown into the pattern, but they were too slow moving to constitute a threat.

The feel of the battle changed again, as did her shot type. Waves of mid-sized bullets radiated out, and those sickening looking lasers were back. The second part of the pattern had her just shooting out several of those things all at once, and it took a little fancy flying to get them to fly past without harming them. They were only glad to break past this spell, no longer needing to look at those weird homing lasers.

Something new was about, though, as now she started firing those same bullets from before from a remote location; you would think the shots were random, but in fact it was like four arms that were sprouting out of the center and going in opposing circles around the thing. If one were to look closely you could see the gaps that would allow you to graze right on by.

Alice was starting to look exhausted from exerting so much magic. The next pattern involved arrowhead bullets in a circular pattern similar to Shinki's last spell. They were rapid-fire, more so than most of her other spells had been, but you could tell this was a last effort, since nothing else came at them but these bullets. With such easily identifiable corridors to traverse, the four had few issues avoiding these shots and finally managed to put the girl down.

With that last spell broken, the magic holding the dimension that Alice had created faded away, leaving them once more at the border between Makai and Gensokyo. The girl was barely holding the book by its spine and was wiping away at her eyes with the other. Reimu, Mima, and Yuuka just looked down at her with little pity before flying through the hole; Marisa, on the other hand, chose to grin and say, "That was a nice try, ze. You'll have to do better than that to stop us, though!" She then flew through the hole, leaving Alice alone.

* * *

Shinki paced around her office in the castle; most of it was still intact, despite everything that had happened. Yumeko walked in and bowed.

"Well, what have you found?" Shinki asked, some anxiety betrayed in her voice.

"She's not to be found in the castle, nor the outskirts of Makai according to Yuki and Mai. One of the last of the staff to escape the castle noted her slipping off into the tunnel that leads to the barrier." Yumeko bit her lip. "It was right after the end of your battle, and she was seen carrying… the book."

Shinki gasped. "No, she couldn't have… That book is almost too much for me to handle, there's no way she could use it without it changing her." She hugged herself and shivered. "Poor Alice; I never wanted anything like that to happen to her."

Yumeko was at a loss for what to do. Her eyes widened as she remembered something. "Oh, Lady Shinki! One more thing: it appears that someone witnessed something happening at the gate after that, as well. The four were apparently swallowed up by some kind of magic that they hadn't seen before, then a short time later saw them all reappear with a fifth person there. The four left Makai, and after awhile the fifth left as well; you don't suppose…?"

Shinki lifted her gaze to her maid and whispered, "Let us hope…"


	2. The Summer of Love Sign

**Author's Notes**: You have no idea how difficult it is to adapt the words of one story to fit in with the words of another story; I had to take the section of Adaptation that concerns the time between Mystic Square and Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, transcribe certain scenes while correcting what little mistakes had been left in, all while keeping in mind that it's third person so I have to change the wording for point of view and working in more thoughts and actions from characters that weren't focused on in Adaptation.

It was fun, though. I'm starting to build this story up with new things that are coming to light from other angles. Please be aware that Marisa's mainly dealing with an initial physical attraction at the moment and isn't willing to dive in and say anything yet. Anyways, this chapter took a long time to write because it was a long chapter to write (longer than Adaptation's entire story by itself, even before notes are factored in). I ask again to please leave a review of the chapter to let me know what you think is right and what is wrong, and please let me know of any blatant errors, whether in the actual telling of the story or in simpler things such as spelling and grammar.

**Disclaimer**: Touhou Project is owned by Team Shanghai Alice, of whom the sole member is ZUN. I only own the words and the story.

* * *

A new day dawned on Gensokyo; the "invasion" of youkai and fairies had retreated and all seemed at peace. Yuuka went home, satisfied in having taken out a chunk of Makai and scheduled a very long nap in celebration. Mima found a quiet corner of the shrine to nap in. Despite the fact that it was dark out already, Marisa felt like accompanying Reimu back for tea, like a success party, or some nonsense like that.

So when Reimu woke up the next morning and discovered Marisa holding her in her sleep, she rolled her eyes and shook her head, saying, "Oh, Marisa… what am I going to do with you?" She carefully extricated herself from the embrace and stood up, stretching and yawning while taking in her surroundings; the shrine was more or less well kept up, despite the lack of donations, and yet something about the state of the room was bothering her…

Oh wait, there it was; a largish sack was stashed in the corner that she didn't recognize. She started walking towards it when she heard Marisa stirring. Turning back to face the girl, she said, "Hey Marisa; this sack yours?"

Marisa sat up and looked towards the corner bleary eyed and said, "I dunno. What's in it?"

Reimu finished walking over to it and peered in. '_Yep, just as I thought…_' "Mushrooms."

Marisa grinned. "Yeah, that's mine."

Reimu sighed. "Where did these come from, anyways?" She held her hand out to stop the answer, since she actually kind of knew it already. "Better question, _how_ did you get this sack out of Makai without any of us seeing you carry it?"

Marisa shrugged. "I have my ways." Standing up, she walked over to the sack and hefted it, nearly falling forwards from the weight, and said, "I'm gonna take these home; I'll be back, later ze!" She went outside and mounted her broom, zooming away and leaving Reimu to wonder about that girl's sanity.

Reimu went outside and shook the donation box a little; silence greeted her, but it was to be expected. She went back inside and put on some tea, foraging around her pantry for some fruit and proceeded to take her breakfast outside.

Just as she was about to partake, Mima suddenly popped up beside her with a smile on her face. Reimu stopped only momentarily before resuming her previous actions. "It seems my darling student has taken something of a liking to you." Mima said.

Reimu took a sip of tea. "She'll get over it."

Mima's eyes widened, like it wasn't the expected response. "Now why is that? I thought you would have jumped at the chance for such companionship?"

Remaining unimpressed with the speech, Reimu said, "Perhaps, but I've got awhile yet before I can think of things like that; this last incident has got me thinking that there are some things needing to change, and I'm the only one that can make them happen."

"Hmm… such confidence." Mima mused. "Or is that conceit? I can never tell with some humans." She spotted a figure speeding towards the shrine at a distance and said, "Ah, there's Marisa now; I think I'll take my leave, have fun you two!" With that she spirited herself deeper into the shrine.

Reimu rolled her eyes and stood up, figuring Marisa would want some tea as well; she always did. By the time the girl touched down, she was already back out holding an extra cup for her. Marisa took it and grinned. "Thanks!" Marisa eagerly sipped at the drink.

They spent most of the morning like this, which was a little odd for Marisa, as she rarely slowed down to enjoy the day the same way Reimu did. The silence wasn't to last, of course, as eventually Marisa finally got to the point where she said what she felt like saying.

"Hey Reimu; you ever feel like getting out and going place?"

Reimu looked over to her friend; Marisa was pointedly _not_ looking her way, meaning she wasn't sure what answer she was going to get. This wasn't troubling, though. "What, you mean like on a date?"

Let it be said that the only person more blunt with words than Marisa is Reimu. Marisa usually just says what's on her mind without thinking about it, and that does get her into trouble more often than not, but Reimu is more calculating in what she says; this just means that when Reimu says something that's straight to the point, she rarely regrets doing it.

Marisa was surprised at the response, not in a way that she didn't want to hear this so much as in a "didn't think she'd catch on that quick" sort of way. She'd heard that Reimu's intuition was legendary, but hadn't realized its power until right at that moment.

"Er, uh, yeah sure!"

Reimu took a deep breath; now it was time to see if she was right in her assumption. "Marisa; I'm flattered that you think of me like that, but right now isn't a good time for me to think about things like that. I still have training that I need to do in the coming years, and there's even something that I've determined needs to be done in the near future that only I can do; I need to remain undistracted the entire time." She saw Marisa's face fall at this, which was entirely not like the girl; still she pressed onward. "But… in a few years if you haven't managed to find someone that makes you as happy as you make them, I'll be here." Reimu smiled brightly after saying this; something that doesn't happen incredibly often.

Marisa looked up at the Shrine Maiden, no longer feeling nearly as bad as she was a minute ago. "You know, I ought to feel upset, but I just can't manage it right now. No wonder you're the Wonderful Shrine Maiden of Paradise." Reimu made a face at this, which got Marisa to laugh, just as intended.

Such roundabout declarations could throw some friendships in jeopardy, yet neither Marisa nor Reimu had any intention of letting that happen. Perhaps it's because they were both nearly the same age and could stand to keep each other company, or possibly that they'd both done too much, both together and against each other, to have it any other way.

* * *

The next few weeks were spent going about usual routine: read from books she barely understood, gather and prepare mushrooms for experiments that didn't call for them, and hang out at the shrine where Reimu and Mima would both provide her with entertainment to relax and distract her from work that just wasn't getting done.

A festival was coming up at the Human Village, which meant a night of free food, drinks, and entertainment; it also meant a visit to her parents. She didn't go to her old home often, mostly because her father didn't approve of her choice of profession, wishing she had simply stayed home and helped tend the store. Her parents ran the Kirisame Second Hand store, which was quite well off in its business; villagers tended to trade broken and unusable tools, along with a little money, for workable ones, and in turn Marisa's father would repair the broken ones to the best of his ability. It wasn't necessarily a rarity for new implements to be made so much as his were cheaper, yet still performed as well as anything new could.

Marisa had been toying with the idea of opening a shop of her own out of her house, but didn't want to do it without people knowing it was there; the idea was to sell some of her magical discoveries and other such things that were scattered around the house that she could part with, but every time a festival came around, she never had enough of her experiments finished, or indeed intact, to actually try showing off and selling.

It was such that she was empty handed (save for her broom) when she arrived that evening. The party, as it were, hadn't started yet, so she figured on taking the opportunity to drop in on the store. She threw the door open and walked in, shouting, "Hey pops, you still here?"

Mr. Kirisame appeared visibly agitated from the moment she walked in. Out of the backroom walked Mrs. Kirisame, who strode up to the girl and said, "Marisa! It's been so long, look how you've grown."

Marisa blushed from the attention and shied away. "Aw, it's only been a few months, ze." She looked around the store; it appeared a little larger than she remembered it. "You guys add on to the place?"

"Yes we did." Her father said, calming down slightly due to the look his wife gave him. "We had a lot of business, suddenly, and then we needed more room to hold what was being traded in. It seemed like it was for the best to do at the time."

Marisa smiled, genuinely happy for her parents' business. A thought hit her. "How are you guys doing since Kourin quit? He's got his own shop on the edge of the forest, now."

Rinnosuke Morichika, called Kourin only by Marisa, is a half-youkai who was very nearly ostracized from the village due to his parentage. The Kirisame family wasn't one to judge, however, and took him in with the agreement being that as long as he lived there, he worked for the family; this helped him in the acceptance department. It was soon learned that he had a strange ability to be able to identify any kind of object by name and could tell exactly what it did just by looking at it; the only issue being that he couldn't actually determine what an object was _used_ _for_ (which is an entirely different question than asking what an item is _capable_ _of doing_). He gained an interest in objects from outside of the barrier and eventually earned himself enough to build a house outside of town. He now runs his own shop, called Kourindou, out of his home; the items for sale are all things from the outside world, but he never puts the most interesting, or especially the working ones that he can tell, up for sale. He has a somewhat lopsided business sense.

Mr. Kirisame belted out a laugh that would make mountain men envious. "Hah, it's _because_ of Rinnosuke's shop that we wound up getting more business. The poor man tells people that an object can do certain things, and the people wind up in worse situations than before; after that, they come to us to get a _proper_ tool!"

Marisa sighed, but grinned. It was just like Rinnosuke to do just that. She turned when she heard the commotion outside raise up by a stage. Looking back at her parents, she said, "Are you sure you're going to stay open tonight? You do this every year."

Her mother grinned right back, proving once and for all where she got _that_ from. "Honey, it's nights like these that we do our best business. You just go on and enjoy the night; there's a new girl here that the kids just love… I think she might just be your type."

Marisa blushed at the prospect and rushed out the door, barely hearing her father say, "You shouldn't encourage her like that…"

It was a point of contention between father and daughter; he wanted grandchildren one day, but her choice of attraction didn't lead him to believe he'd ever have any. It of course didn't help that her mother was supportive of her, as was most of Gensokyo, where there really was no taboo on that sort of thing. Besides, he wasn't more than just disappointed in that; most of his disapproval had to do with her choice to become a witch.

The festival had definitely started in earnest by that point; people were singing and dancing and quite a number looked like they had already had too much to drink. Marisa decided to take a quick look around to see what had truly changed since her last visit. The inspection didn't last long as it wasn't an overly large village, plus Marisa didn't feel like leaving the plaza and heading into the less lit up areas.

There was a gathering of children sitting on the ground at one end of the village center; this wasn't necessarily unusual, as there was usually an area for just entertaining the children during these sorts of things. Being just a little curious as to what the entertainment was, she joined the adults who were standing behind their children and saw who her mother was probably trying to tell her about.

She was blond like Marisa, but had her hair cut shorter and held back with a red hairband; her choice of clothing was unassuming, being a pale blue dress adorned with pink ribbons and a white shawl around her shoulders. '_Mom was right, she is cute…_' Marisa thought.

She watched as the girl controlled three small dolls on a little stage; there didn't appear to be any strings, so Marisa theorized some kind of magic was at work. Strange that the villagers were okay with that, but perhaps they didn't equate controlling dolls by magic with being dangerous.

The girl finished an act and announced she was taking a break; for some reason she suddenly appeared very anxious, which bothered Marisa, so she decided to go and formally introduce herself. Perhaps all she needed was a friend?

When Marisa reached her, the girl appeared to be nervously sipping at some water. Marisa took the initiative. "Hey, you're not too bad; you new around here?"

The girl quickly gulped down a little more water before trying to compose herself. "Yes, I… just arrived a few weeks ago."

Marisa was taking the opportunity to study her closer while she was saying that. '_I take it back, she's not just cute… hey, wait a minute… I recognize that book…_' "Wait, I recognize you now! You're that girl from Makai, ain'tcha?"

She didn't respond at first, at least verbally; her eyes had widened and she appeared very afraid all of a sudden. Marisa picked up on this, however, and came to a quick conclusion as to _why_ she suddenly reacted that way. Marisa raised her hands in front of her and said, "Oh, don't worry; I'm not gonna tell nobody. I'm just surprised to find you up here is all."

The girl relaxed momentarily, then narrowed her eyes. "Why? After everything that happened back home, why would you choose to leave me be?"

'_This poor girl must have really had it rough; I wonder if she ever actually had any friends in Makai? She sure looks like she could use one right now…_' Marisa grinned. "Well, if you want a fight that bad… I just meant that these villagers seem to have taken a liking to you, and I'm sure the kids'd be disappointed to find that you weren't going to be around anymore." Marisa's gaze wandered for a moment before returning to the girl. "Oh yeah, we haven't introduced ourselves, have we? Name's Marisa. Kirisame Marisa."

Marisa extended her right hand, giving the girl a moment to realize what she wanted, and shook her hand vigorously, laughing internally at the surprised expression from the strength of her grip. "Alice Margatroid," the girl had said.

Marisa indicated towards the stage and said, "You should probably get back to your show; wouldn't want to deprive the kids of their entertainment."

Alice nodded and walked back over to the stage, reestablishing her connection and waiting for the all the children to give her their attention. Marisa went back to the place she was standing earlier and continued to watch. '_She's changed so much in such a short time; I've got all kinds of questions, but how to find a way to ask them? She lives here now, and I don't visit all that often… Wait, I know!_' The sudden thought brought a huge smile to her face, half genuine, half conspiratorial. '_I'll invite her to sleep over tonight! We can get to know each other a little better and I can ask my questions._'

With the night winding down, Alice announced the last show she was going to put on, which was just as well, as a few of the children had already been taken home, and from the ones that were left, some looked like they were falling asleep; it was getting a little late for most of the children.

Once she had finished and packed up, Marisa approached her and said, "I don't know where you're staying right now, but how about you stay over at my place tonight? It'll be like a sleepover!"

Alice's expression went from slightly taken aback to absolute curiosity; she said, "Um… okay. I guess that would be alright. I need to go get some things first, though…"

Marisa already had an excited expression, so when Alice said this she didn't notice Marisa's face light up even more. Seeing an opportunity to answer one of her questions right now, she said, "I'll go with ya!"

Alice started walking in one direction with Marisa following; it didn't take entirely too long for Marisa to realize where they were headed, however, since at one point she _did_ live in the village. As they approached the house, a voice Marisa recognized almost immediately said, "Well well, Marisa Kirisame; not content with mere possessions, now you've come to steal my houseguest as well?"

Alice looked back at Marisa and saw her looking away towards the ground, the guilt quite plain on her face. Marisa replied, "Aw, come on Miss Keine; I haven't taken anything from anyone in a long time! It's only for one night, I swear!"

Now this was the truth; while many of Marisa's current possessions were once other peoples' possessions, she had not, in fact, taken anything from anybody in a few years. It wasn't that she was over her collection habits so much as nobody had anything left that she wanted to indefinitely borrow. Alice, of course, was a little confused at the statements but was doing a very good job of not letting on about that.

Keine had chuckled upon hearing Marisa's impassioned denial. "It's fine, Marisa; just make sure you bring her back in one piece tomorrow, okay?"

Keine had smiled as she said that, and Marisa smiled right back, though it didn't look like there was any malicious intention between the two. "Of course, ze!"

Alice was, at first, unsure about the exchange between the two, but having noticed Keine's expression, she decided to drop her worry and just go with it. She nodded as she entered the house and returned a few minutes later carrying a cloth sack. Marisa waited as Alice bowed to Keine before mounting her broom and beckoning for the girl to follow her into the air.

Going by air from the Human Village to the Forest of Magic wasn't a particularly long trip, so in very little time they had made it to Marisa's house. It was not a very large house, being only a single floor, but considering that Marisa lived alone it must have been quite spacious for her. After touching down, the owner shoved the door open in an incredibly casual manner and just walked right in, with Alice following cautiously behind her.

Compared to the outside of the house, the inside looked like it had weathered a monster storm, and should you hear some of the gossip about Marisa you might believe one actually did pass through. It wasn't that the house had a lot of trash in it; quite the contrary, Marisa usually cleaned up after herself quite admirably. The issue was that there was a pretty good collection of books scattered all over the place, with no sight of any kind of organization. Alice looked taken aback at first, but chose not to say anything out of courtesy.

Marisa cleared a wooden table off that could only be described as a dining room table, even if there wasn't any actual indication of being a dining room. Actually, it appeared to be more of a primary living space that could be used for multiple purposes; as the table was close to where the kitchen was, it could easily be theorized as to what purpose the table had. She said, "Home sweet home; make yourself comfortable, I'll bring us some tea!"

Alice started towards the table while Marisa entered the kitchen and fetched a small teapot, which she took over to the sink and begun filling. Alice's face contorted with confusion as she asked, "You have running water here?"

Marisa looked up, a little surprised at the question, and said, "Yeah; it costs a little, but it's one o' them _conveniences_ that the Kappa have been tryin' to bring to everyone in Gensokyo. They hear about all kinds of strange stuff from the outside world and try to recreate it here."

Alice sat down and gazed around the room as Marisa continued preparing the tea. Once it was ready she poured out two cups and brought them over, handing one to her houseguest while sitting down across from her with the other one. Marisa noticed she wasn't drinking and took a sip of her own in order to encourage the girl.

That did the trick, but the response wasn't exactly favorable, as Alice had a look like she didn't enjoy it too much. Marisa said, "Aw, don't like my recipe?"

Alice shook her head. "It's not that; back in Makai we didn't drink tea. We mostly had just water, milk and coffee."

Marisa looked a little surprised at that revelation. "Coffee, huh?" She gulped down most of the rest of her tea. "Coffee is hard to find around here; only the richest of villagers tend to have any." '_Guess that means my pop now, huh?_' "'Tis why we mostly drink tea!" Marisa finished her drink while Alice nursed at hers. '_Okay, question time…_' "So tell me, Alice; how is it that you look like this now? Back almost a month ago you looked like a little girl."

Marisa thought the girl might have wanted to spit out her tea for a moment. "I… don't actually know the reason. Shortly after leaving Makai, my body started changing on its own. Now, I at least physically look my own age of fourteen, whereas before I looked no older than ten."

This shocked Marisa; knowing what she does about the atmosphere in Makai, it probably shouldn't have, but it did anyways. She couldn't help but stare at Alice, or more specifically, at her chest. "You're a year younger than me, huh?" Marisa looked down at the front of her robe and frowned. "Younger but more developed than me, just like Reimu…"

Marisa was never entirely that self conscious of her body, at least not until the very recent past. She wasn't necessarily jealous, either. Still, she was occasionally haunted by the words "late bloomer," which was at least frustrating to her.

Fortunately for Alice, Marisa didn't look up to notice the slight blush on her face as she said this. Alice saw an opportunity to ask her own question. "A-anyways… what were you doing with them in Makai? I mean, other than blowing everything up?"

Marisa grinned, recalling a fond memory of using her imitation Master Spark, and grinned a little harder when she saw a little movement out of Alice's eyebrows. "Oh, I'm a youkai hunter, or exterminator depending on who you talk to. A bunch of foreign fairies and youkai showed up in Gensokyo one day, and Reimu set out to find where they were coming from and put a stop to them. It wasn't the first time something like that happened, so I followed her in order to practice my magic and maybe get a share of the glory." '_And mushrooms,_' she thought. "Mima followed next, partly because of me and partly because of Reimu; Mima used to be my mentor for learning magic and she's kind of like the resident evil spirit of Reimu's shrine. As for Yuuka… I actually don't know why she followed; maybe she just wanted to blow some stuff up?" She leaned back in her chair and propped her feet up on the table, which Alice didn't appear to care for. She continued after putting her hands behind her head, "We followed the trail of youkai to the cave where the border of Gensokyo and Makai was, and just went from there. You should know the rest of the story, of course." She winked after saying that.

Alice was, of course, part of that story, being the first one to stand in their way once they had entered Makai. Alice had tried her hardest to protect her home, but ultimately failed. Every adversary the four encountered fell before them, some more easily than others. When Shinki, goddess of Makai and the woman Alice claimed as her mother, also fell she became more than a little enraged at what was happening and stole the forgotten grimoire from out of the castle library, changing her in subtle ways and giving her access to extraordinary powers. She brought these powers to bear at the barrier between Makai and Gensokyo, but was still left wanting when they managed to break past her. With fear and shame gripping her heart, she'd fled Makai, unable to ever fathom returning.

Thinking about Makai and her grimoire caused Alice to subconsciously reach for where she had set it on the table while setting her cup down. Fortunately Marisa's head was in the clouds and she didn't notice the reaction. What happened next startled Alice into very nearly releasing a barrage of danmaku Marisa's way, had she not chosen to restrain herself at the last moment; Marisa had dropped her chair back down to the floor and reached up to take off her hat. The next thing Alice knew, Marisa was holding a small piece of octagon-shaped wood; along the top surface towards each of the eight sides were a set of markings called Trigrams.

Marisa held the object in the center of the table and said, "Check this out; it's called a mini-hakkero. I got it from Kourin just before we left for Makai. He described it as an 'elemental reactor' and it's supposed to enhance the power of my magic. You probably weren't paying attention during our second battle, but it's the only reason I was able to stand up to what you did to us." This was not a lie, because while Marisa fired no lasers during that battle, she kept the device out and used it to amplify her regular danmaku to be a little stronger and more numerous than she would have been capable of at the time. "Of course, the others didn't need anything like this; I have to work really hard to train my magic up, but Yuuka and Mima are already really powerful, and Reimu… well, everything comes natural to her. I'm always behind her when it comes to Youkai hunting ability."

There was a slight bit of jealousy in her words, indicative that Reimu had been besting her for some time. Despite Alice's fascination with this, she yawned; Marisa took this as a sign that it might be time to wrap things up for the night. There would always be more opportunities to speak with the girl.

'_All right, I'll just take these cups away and go set up the… oh, wait…_' Marisa's eyes widened at the sudden realization of her oversight and said, "Uh… heh heh… I kinda forgot to tell ya that I've only got the one futon fer sleepin'; that gonna be a problem?"

A small, almost imperceptible twitch occurred in Alice's left eye. She appeared to think this over for a moment before shrugging and answering, "It can't be helped; I guess you did say this is supposed to be a sleepover, after all…" Marisa relaxed after hearing this, having not wanted to offend her guest. Alice picked up her sack and asked, "Um, do you have anywhere I can change?"

'_Guess she's a little self conscious… Eh, I'd probably be embarrassed for her if she had just started changing in front of me, anyways._' Marisa pointed towards a closed door on the near side of the kitchen and said, "Yeah, uh, you can change in the bathroom there…"

Marisa watched as Alice walked in tentatively; once the door was shut, she proceeded to strip down to her underwear and found a plain white shirt to wear to sleep in, then pulled the futon out and begun preparing it. It was finished being set up when the door opened again and Alice walked out in a simple green nightgown.

Alice yawned again before climbing in and saying a quick goodnight while Marisa worked a little magic to snuff out all of the lights in the house. Alice appeared to fall asleep quickly; Marisa, on the other hand, laid there still awake and thinking to herself.

'_I still don't know much about her; we didn't actually get much opportunity to talk. I'll have to stop by from time to time to talk some more._' She turned to look at the sleeping girl. '_Mom might be right; she just might be my type… She's a magician like me, though her specialty is different; that doesn't matter though. Seeing her like this, she's just a little more than cute…_'

Blushing from the thought, Marisa shut her eyes and successfully managed to fall asleep.

* * *

Something awoke Marisa that night. She was a little disappointed in that, since she was having a wonderful sort of dream where some kind of red-capped mushroom allowed her to grow really tall and become strong enough to smash floating brick walls from below them. Once she realized what caused her to wake up, however, she quickly forgot it all and woke right up.

Alice had gripped Marisa's shirt in her sleep and she could be heard whimpering softly; a clear indication of a nightmare. Marisa reached her free arm over and gently gripped Alice's shoulder, saying, "Alice!" The girl didn't stir, however, and so she tried shaking her a little; still nothing. Marisa was a little worried by this point; she said with a little more force, "Wake up, Alice!"

That did it; Alice's eyes shot open and she looked around in confusion, as if she didn't recognize her surroundings. Relief washed over Marisa and she said, "Oh good, you're awake ze. Sounds like you were having quite the nightmare, all whimpering and clutching at my shirt and all." Alice looked down and saw that she had balled her fists into Marisa's shirt; she released it and moved away, blushing the entire time. They both stared at the ceiling for a few minutes before Marisa turned to her companion and said, "So, you gonna talk about it? It might help…"

Alice shuddered as she recalled the dream; she took a moment to compose herself before launching into the story. "I was back at the castle in Makai; I looked like I did on the day we fought. Mother and Yumeko were berating me for running off and putting myself in danger, as well as for stealing the grimoire from out of the library. They then started yelling at me for leaving Makai, and demanded answers from me for why. For a second there, I thought my mother was going to hit me…" Marisa watched as a tear was shed from Alice's eye; this was hitting the girl much harder than she had thought it would. "It… only got worse from there; not only was it just mother and Yumeko asking, but Yuki and Mai showed up, too. I was surrounded and they just kept yelling and asking me why…"

Marisa started to feel a little bad; Alice wouldn't be going through this if they hadn't met at the festival. Still, she knew the only way for her to get over the issue was let it out. "Well, why did you leave?"

Alice appeared stunned for a moment; it was understandable, she pressed onward anyways. "I… I left Makai because I was embarrassed and ashamed that I'd been defeated, even after taking the grimoire out of the castle. I had deliberately disobeyed my own mother and broken one of the foremost rules of the castle. There was no way I could return to face her after all of that."

'_I thought so; she's afraid of the repercussions of her actions back home and still wondering if she did the right thing._' Marisa considered her options for a moment before replying, startling Alice in the process. "Oh, is that it? Yeah, I'd probably do the same thing in your position. Heck, once I started following Mima, I basically abandoned the village and my parents. Did I ever tell you how Reimu and I met?"

"Er, no. Never."

Marisa turned to look out the window, the not quite full moon illuminating the night, and her face. She recalled the fond memory of that earlier time when she just wanted to learn magic and prove herself, even coloring her hair in an effort to separate who she is with who she was. "Well, I've wanted to study magic and become a witch since I was a little girl; I would sneak off and read books about basic magic and danmaku and stuff. A little over two years ago, though, I met Mima one night outside of town while I was trying to practice. She stumbled onto me while muttering something about getting revenge on some 'Shrine Maiden.' At the time, I didn't actually know anything about Reimu or the Hakurei Shrine, so I didn't know who she was complaining about. She was intrigued at my attempts to perform magic and offered to mentor me; I jumped at the chance. After months of teaching me lower power versions of everything she knew, we started the incident."

Alice made a cute face at what Marisa had said; at least Marisa thought it was cute. "Incident? What do you mean?"

Marisa looked away and smiled. "Well, usually how it goes is some youkai or another starts up some trouble, and after it's all good and resolved it goes and gets called an 'incident.' Mima is an evil spirit, about as youkai as they come, and extremely powerful. Apparently the Hakurei Shrine had been destroyed sometime in the previous year and Reimu had gone into hell to try to find the culprit; she found Mima, and while Mima denies doing the deed, Reimu still punished her for it. I guess that gave Mima the incentive to escape back into Gensokyo to get her revenge."

Alice was thoroughly intrigued, if not confused as to the point of it all. "What kind of revenge?"

Marisa giggled. "She wrecked the shrine." Alice just stared at Marisa after she said that, not that Marisa was paying attention. "Considering Reimu had accused her of doing just that before, she thought it was something like Divine Justice that she should actually destroy it this time. We escaped and waited for her to show up, and show she did. Mima sent me out after her first, and I was so cocky that I thought I could beat her; I hardly lasted five minutes against her and that stupid turtle." She sighed in remembrance. "Mima didn't last too long, either. Reimu punished her again and made her promise not to start any more incidents. Since then, I've been following Reimu whenever she went out to resolve anything."

Alice unintentionally appeared a little puzzled, which Marisa had expected to happen. "Once I was a full witch, I chose to leave the village; my parents wouldn't want me around, since they hate magic in general and would have rather had me taking over their store in the village." She paused. "You've seen it, right? The 'Kirisame Second-hand Store' in the village?" Alice nodded. "Yeah, my pop owns that place. I visit them during festivals, but otherwise I usually stay out of the village; they're all a really superstitious lot. Magic frightens a lot of them, and they all hate youkai unconditionally…"

"But aren't you a youkai exterminator?"

Marisa was a little confused, considering she just explained about her mentor. "Hey, did you forget that my mentor was a youkai? Youkai aren't bad or evil on principal, but the villagers treat them as all the same. I just hunt down the ones that are causing trouble or are in my way."

Alice nodded again. They both laid there for a short while before Alice yawned again; she said, "Thank you Marisa."

Marisa just grinned back and said, "You're welcome, ze!" Then she appeared to think about it for a second before saying, "Uh, for what, though?"

Alice giggled in response. "For helping me through my problem; I now know I wasn't wrong to leave my home…" She was silent for a few moments before closing her eyes and saying "Anyways, good night, Marisa."

Marisa turned away and said, "Night, Alice!"

* * *

Alice was a deep sleeper, not that Marisa knew this, of course; when she awoke she was careful not to disturb her houseguest while going about her morning routines. She was just about to begin working on breakfast when Alice began stirring.

Seeing the girl sitting up and stretching, she said, "Ah, good morning; you're just in time, too." Alice stood up and walked in the direction of the kitchen just in time to hear a rather high pitched pop sound; Marisa was seeming to open a container of some sort that had a small red and white piece of paper attached to it. She looked a little confused at that, which Marisa smiled at. "That was me unsealing this thing; Reimu came up with a way to preserve food almost indefinitely using her charms and amulets. Basically, any food you can't finish that will go bad if left out can be first placed into a container of some sort, then she would affix a seal on it which would keep it until the seal is broken." To emphasize she opened the package which appeared to contain some kind of meat which she arranged in a skillet on the stove; holding her hand out towards the underside of the skillet, she caused a magical fire to pop up under it. "Thing is, I can't do these seals myself, and haven't found a magical equivalent yet. I'm still working on it, but I could use a book or two on the subject if I could find one."

Once the food had finished cooking, Marisa put out the fire and divided the meat evenly between two plates, bringing them around to the table for each of them, as well as bringing out some utensils for them. As they began digging in, Alice asked, "Say, where did all of these books come from?"

Alice couldn't place the name of the expression that Marisa had on her face after she asked this, but figured there was something negative about the whole thing. "Oh, they're just books I've collected over the years; I find them all over the place, though I don't think I ever got any of them by searching for them, specifically. If I come across a book that looks interesting I try to get my hands on it." She seemed to be choosing her words very carefully so as not to arouse suspicion in the other girl; the effort seemed satisfactory because she didn't press the issue at that time.

Instead, she brought up the other thing that Marisa was uncomfortable with. "You know, you could really use some organization around here; I'd be happy to help you clean up some of those books."

Marisa could have choked after hearing that, but she was fortunate to have already swallowed that bite. "No thanks; I'm fine with where they're at. I know where everything is already and don't want to screw that up by trying to clean or anything."

This didn't make any sense to Alice, but she went with it anyways; her mother had always told her not to argue with insane people, after all. She finished up and stood up, saying "I should probably be getting back to the village; Keine and the children will be waiting." Marisa took her plate while she walked off to get dressed. Once she had emerged in a similar pale blue dress to the one from the day before, she bid Marisa goodbye (whom had also taken the opportunity to change and dress for the day) and headed back in the direction of the Human Village.

Marisa also headed out, but her destination was the same as it usually was: the Hakurei Shrine. The journey never took entirely too long, but this time it went by even quicker; Marisa was putting a little extra kick in the speed of her broom to get there as fast as she could.

The sight that greeted her was the usual one, where Reimu was sitting in the front of the shrine drinking tea and appearing to enjoy the morning. Upon landing, Marisa couldn't wait to tell her friend the news. "Hey Reimu! Guess who's in Gensokyo?" The Shrine Maiden gave the witch a look that clearly said 'what are you talking about,' so Marisa continued. "Alice came up here and has been here for a month."

Once again, Reimu didn't appear to have any clue as to what was going on at that moment. Marisa sighed and simply told her. "You remember doll girl? The one that attacked us not long after we entered Makai? The one with the book after we were trying to leave?"

"Oh, her." Was all Reimu would say on the matter. Clearly she didn't really care whether the girl was there; perhaps it was because Marisa didn't mention anything about her causing trouble. Marisa had clearly thought this was supposed to be big news, but since it apparently wasn't she was prepared to leave; Mima stopped her, though, by getting her attention from the side of the shrine and beckoning for her to come over and talk to her.

Marisa complied and asked, "Hey, what's up?"

Mima smirked and said, "So that brat followed us out of Makai; did you want me to do something about that?"

Of course, that thought had never crossed Marisa's mind; mostly because she had seen firsthand that Alice wasn't harming anybody. She thrust both hands out in front of her and shook her head. "No! Don't hurt her; she's not doing anybody any harm."

That raised an eyebrow. "You seem awfully protective of the little girl that only wanted to kill you before; is there something you're not… telling me?"

Marisa's cheeks grew hot at the accusation, and she knew she couldn't deny anything to her old master. "Well, the truth is she spent the night over at my house last night…" An incredibly wide smile crept across Mima's face. When Marisa saw this, however, her eyes widened and she very nearly shouted, "No, no, you've got the wrong idea here! I only invited her over so we could talk and become friends!" She lowered both arms to her sides and looked down, her voice growing quiet. "She looked like she could use a friend…"

Now Mima, being a spirit, didn't have a physical heart; she did, however, have a soft spot when it came to Marisa. She knew the girl was actually a little lonely, despite having Reimu and herself to be her friends and keep her company; so when she said that last statement, Mima knew the hidden meaning behind it. "So, you just wanted to be her friend, and that's it, huh?"

Once again Marisa couldn't help her body's automatic response; she said, "Er, well… that is…"

Mima chuckled at the way she was fumbling over her words. '_She must still be sorting out her feelings._' Mima thought. "Don't worry; your secret's safe with me. Now go on, you must have some things planned for the day; no reason to hang around here and get nothing done." Nodding graciously to her former mentor, Marisa hopped onto her broom and sped back in the direction of her house.

Once she was clearly out of visible range of the shrine, Mima casually floated around to where Reimu was still sitting and said, "I guess you were right."

Reimu stared off for a second before asking, "What about?"

Smiling at nothing in particular, she replied, "She definitely got over it."

Processing that statement, Reimu also smiled.

* * *

A week passed in which the routine of the people of Gensokyo was virtually undisturbed. Marisa thought that Reimu had seemed more distant in that time, but chose not to say anything. It was a few days after that that Reimu had disappeared into the shrine with instructions not to be disturbed. Confused, Marisa approached Mima about this.

"I don't actually know." Mima was a notorious liar, but this troubled her enough to not even think about doing that. "I just know that she told me that if I disturbed her in any way before she came out, I would be instantly sealed away for good."

"R-really?" Marisa stammered out. "That's harsh; I wonder what's got her so riled up, though?"

Mima shrugged, showing that she had no clue about the circumstances. Marisa chose not to give it any thought and went ahead and went home, figuring that maybe she should get back to some of her research she'd been putting off.

This didn't work for long, though, and soon she learned that daily visits were going to go unanswered for as long as she was locked up inside the shrine. Now faced with imminent boredom, Marisa took to visiting the only other location she actually knew well: the Human Village.

Surprisingly, nobody really said anything to her as she wandered around the place; the thought occurred to her that she might run into Alice while here and decided it wasn't such a bad thing to visit every once in awhile.

One evening she found herself sitting along the edge of the central plaza of the village lost in thought, or possibly just zoned out. She was roused from her state by the approach of someone familiar. "Oh, hey Alice."

Alice looked at her with concern. "Hello Marisa. Didn't you tell me that you don't come to the village very often? Is something wrong? What's up?"

Marisa mentally giggled at the questions about her wellbeing. "Well, whenever I hit a snag with my magical research, or the mushrooms are taking too long to boil, I usually go to the shrine to bug Reimu until I get bored or she kicks me out; thing is that for the last week she's been locked up in the shrine and I haven't been able to see her."

"Oh…" Marisa detected the slightest amount of disappointment in that simple statement, and wondered where it was coming from. Marisa had been there for a while as the sun had nearly set; considering the time of year, this meant it was quite late out. "You should probably get going; you don't want to be caught flying home by yourself in the dark." Alice was urging her home out of concern for her safety; Marisa very nearly suggested Alice accompany her home, but decided against it.

Another couple of weeks went by; Marisa continued to visit the shrine almost daily, and continued to visit the village every so often, but nothing seemed to be happening. Finally, one day she was in conversation with Mima at the shrine, something that was happening with less frequency because she seemed to be preoccupied about something that Marisa just couldn't figure out, when something very strange occurred; radiating out from the point on the shrine that Reimu had locked herself into was something like a wave. This wave appeared to be affecting the surrounding magic in such a way that it had felt like a _shift_ of some sort; Marisa was slightly alarmed to find that when she turned around Mima was no longer there, nor was there any trace that she had ever _been_ there.

She got distracted, however, by the sound of a door opening in the inner chamber of the shrine; a minute later, a figure emerged wearing clothing similar to the Shrine Maiden outfit that Reimu usually wore, but different as well. The clothing was looser in comparison, and the sleeves were no longer attached to the top. It took a moment for Marisa to figure it all out, though. "Reimu…? Is that really you?" The question was valid, even though there's technically no way it _couldn't_ have been her, since she was the only one in the shrine up until then; the color of her hair and eyes, what was previously purple, were now a dark brown, almost black for the hair, and red for the eyes.

Reimu nodded back; she looked Marisa up and down and said, "Nice clothes." Marisa looked down at herself and found she was wearing a different kind of witch costume; one in black with a white apron tied in the back with a big ribbon. She took off her hat and found it was also black and adorned with a white ribbon. It was exactly as she had imagined one that she wanted, but couldn't find anyone willing to make for her. Replacing her hat, she asked, "What was that? It felt like it changed magic all around…" Her eyes widened and she appeared to panic. "It made Mima disappear!"

Reimu again smiled. "Then it was successful; I've been locked in prayer and meditation for the last few weeks trying to bring a change to Gensokyo. Conflict resolution was a little too dangerous for everyone involved, so I made it so that danmaku was no longer lethal to those in good health; now getting hit just stings a little, and any danmaku that hits something that has no magic or spiritual power just dissipates. Duels will continue until one of the combatants gives up or runs out of magic."

Marisa raised an eyebrow. "So that's it? You're just making it so that people can solve problems without resorting to killing?"

"Well, that's not all of it; I'm creating a new directive out of all of this, too. Danmaku are to be cast in beautiful patterns; there's no reason to solve incidents in a blunt and brutish way. Finally there's a new method of attack to factor in, called a spell card." At Marisa's further questioning gaze, Reimu continued. "Basically you take a piece of paper and imprint a magical signature into it; just imagine your pattern, feed magic into the paper, and once a sufficient amount of magic inhabits it, the natural magic of Gensokyo will transform the paper into a card. These cards can be used to create a more complex pattern that would normally take you longer to cast, so that you can use it instantly; just remember that there is a limited life to these patterns, and your opponent can choose to try to timeout your spell by just dodging around. Finally, I've made it a rule that you can only use a specific card once per duel, and this will be enforced; there is no way around it."

Marisa nodded, satisfied with the explanation; she was still worried about something else, though. "Reimu, that still doesn't explain what happened to Mima, where these clothes came from, and how your hair and eye color managed to change."

"Oh, that." Reimu shrugged. "I kind of added something onto the very end to the prayer where a deep desire, or wish, for everyone would be granted after the wave passed over them; it's why our appearance is different. As for Mima… I think she was tired of existence as an evil spirit, and considering she hasn't done anything too bad since her last punishment, I think she's managed to move herself on to the next life; don't worry, I doubt she's back in hell. If anything, she's going to be reincarnated like most people that have done enough good in their lives would do."

Marisa breathed a sigh of relief; at least nothing truly bad had happened to Mima. She suddenly grew excited, however, and jumped onto her broom and started to speed off; Reimu caught up to her and shouted, "Where are you going?"

Marisa skidded to a stop and turned around, only to be faced with Reimu. She looked down and noticed a distinct lack of turtle. She blinked. "How are you flying?"

Reimu blushed and looked away. "That's something else I desired; since I couldn't seem to figure it out on my own, I wanted to be granted the power of flight without actually having to try. Now, anyways, where are you going?"

Marisa grinned. "I've gotta tell Alice all about this; she'll probably want to know what that wave was, after all."

Reimu slowly nodded, finally fully understanding Mima's words from those many weeks ago. Marisa waved and turned around, heading for the Human Village while Reimu also turned and went back to her shrine.

Marisa was flying at a pretty high speed when she heard someone shout her name from the direction of the Forest of Magic. She turned to look and found the one she was looking for flying over there; she changed course and stopped directly in front of her, still as excited about the change as she had been before. "Hey Alice! Did you feel that? The change in the magic of Gensokyo?"

Alice gave her a curious look before saying, "Yes, it made me lose control of my dolls for a moment… And spawned a house."

Marisa did a double take at that, which caused Alice to giggle in response; Marisa nearly accused Alice of making fun of her before the girl flew downward rapidly, making Marisa actually look below the tree line, where a house was sitting there as if it had been there the whole time. This caused a second double take.

Marisa also dropped down and said, "Uh… wait, that **is** a house there! Alice, how did you do that?" Alice had entered the house, so Marisa followed.

"I actually don't know… I was imagining this house here before the magic shift and when I turned around, there it was." Alice had closed her eyes and breathed in. "I'm going to move in here. Not that I want to disappoint the children, but it's time I started taking care of myself for a change.

Marisa stared for a minute before shaking her head and saying, "Oh yeah, I was going to tell you; Reimu finally left the shrine! She's been meditating and praying and whatnot for weeks now in order make a global change to all of Gensokyo. She's introduced a new set of rules for resolving incidents and minor issues: the Spell Card rules!"

Alice managed a confused look which convinced Marisa that she had no idea what she was talking about. "Spell Card rules? What are those?"

"Well, you remember how we slung danmaku at each other in the last incident? Reimu's gone and changed the way it works so that it's completely safe to be hit by a danmaku bullet; it'll just sting like hell for awhile. The idea is that conflict resolution should be beautiful and the danmaku should reflect that. Combatants should take turns creating more and more beautiful and complex patterns in an attempt to take each other out of the fight, and between regular patterns are special named ones called Spell Cards!"

Marisa appeared excited at the prospect of safer duels. Alice looked at the book in her arms, seeming pensive about something. "How do you make a spell card?"

Marisa's grin widened. "Easy, ze! You take a blank slip of paper and imprint a magical signature on it. The magic of Gensokyo does the rest in actually turning it into a card. Once it's become an imprinted card, it's permanent, though according to the rules, when you're in a duel you can only use a card once."

Alice nodded in understanding. "Okay; and how exactly do you create this imprint?"

Marisa was now smirking; she did enjoy knowing more than others about particular subjects, though she also took joy from _informing_ people of things they didn't previously know. "It's all imagination; you just hold the paper and imagine the pattern you want to base it off of, then feed magic into the paper. Once enough magic is there, **bam**! Instant spell card!"

Marisa's enthusiasm was overwhelming, even infectious. They both were imagining the possibilities just as a sudden knocking was heard from the door. The girls looked at each other in puzzlement before Alice walked up to the door and opened it. "Can I help you?"

There was a man on the front porch who didn't look like he wanted to be there at all. He was a Kappa, and he looked between the two girls in front of him before settling on the one who opened the door. "You the owner of this house?" Alice nodded. "Well, you just hooked into the pipeline that's connected to the witch's house. You've gotta pay for that water, or we're ripping that pipe out and making you pay for the work!"

Alice appeared slightly taken aback by the sudden demand; she said, "Um… yes; I will agree to pay whatever is needed. I hadn't realized it was connected already…"

Marisa marveled at the house in general while Alice and the man worked out a price. When they were finished and the man had left she said, "Wow; you even magick'd up running water! It took me ages for them to hook me up after asking for it."

Alice started to leave, prompting Marisa to follow; Alice turned back to lock the house using some kind of magic that Marisa was unfamiliar with, then took to the air to return to the Human Village at a speed she rarely used.

* * *

Two weeks after Alice had moved into her new home she found herself entertaining Marisa for the first time. Alice had many things she had wanted to do in preparation, from stocking up on a flavor of tea that she found she liked, to arranging a few of the personal effects she had accumulated, to even trying to come up with some spell cards to show off.

As it was, her ideas were not unlike her original ideas for danmaku attacks from her first encounter with Reimu and Marisa; she still loved to create and animate dolls, but unfortunately the original two dolls she had brought with her were too small to form an effective attack, plus the third doll which she had made after living in Gensokyo for a short time was never meant for combat. Those three were currently sitting on the mantle of her fireplace; she had set to work on a whole new combat doll, but was only halfway finished with her by the time Marisa had invited herself over.

Alice was preparing their tea when Marisa asked, "So, does she have a name?"

Alice stopped and thought for a moment before saying, "Shanghai… I think I'll call her Shanghai."

Marisa regarded the half finished doll. "It's a nice name. She's a combat doll, huh?"

Alice had finished and brought over two cups, just like Marisa had done back when she was a houseguest. "That's the plan, though I'm wondering about how this is going to work to be imprinted in a spell card… Do I need as many physical copies of the dolls in order to invoke it? Or will the magic simply create them and I just have to invoke it?"

Marisa shrugged and sipped at her drink. "I dunno; I've not tried to come up with any that need to spawn physical objects."

Alice nodded. "How are your spell cards coming along? Got any good ones?"

Marisa grinned and dug into a pocket of her apron, producing two cards. "I've already got a couple figured out; the first one is based on my star patterns from the past which I call **Magic Sign [Stardust Reverie]**, the second one is based on the laser I'm able to produce with my mini-hakkero which I call **Love Sign [Master Spark]**."

Alice wasn't surprised with the first one, but the second one intrigued her. "Love Sign? What's that about?"

Internally, Marisa felt a little bit of panic well up; she hid it somewhat easily, though, and said, "Oh, uh… I've read once that love is the ultimate form of magic; more powerful than anything else in the universe, ze. I thought if I harnessed such a power I would be pretty hard to beat."

Alice appeared satisfied with that answer, which relieved Marisa. It wasn't that she wanted to hide away what feelings she'd experienced over the last few weeks, but considering how long they actually knew each other, Marisa didn't want to make Alice feel like she was being taken advantage of or worse, being made fun of. Better to give it some time and see where life takes them; she wouldn't wait forever, of course, but this was not the time to declare anything.

They had enjoyed their evening together, and Alice had felt good at having successfully entertained a guest herself. Everything seemed peaceful as the Summer was wearing down.

This was not to last, of course…


	3. Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

**Author's Notes**: This chapter took a long time to write, mostly because it required much research to get it done right. I once again went into great detail with the danmaku, but that's easier now that there's named spell cards.

Anyways, I hope you all enjoy this chapter, and please let me know what you think of it, and especially what you may think is wrong with it. I especially value constructive criticism.

**Disclaimer**: Touhou Project is owned by Team Shanghai Alice, whose sole member is ZUN. I only own the words.

* * *

The Summer was winding down peacefully; Reimu had found that the shrine was much quieter without Mima's constant presence, which was something she certainly didn't mind. Marisa visited just as often, of course, but she didn't mind that so much, either; apparently without Mima there to egg her on, Marisa was much calmer most of the time.

It was one seemingly calm evening when a strange, deep red mist appeared and spread over Gensokyo, blotting out the sky. This troubled the pair of incident solvers, but neither could figure out why such a thing could happen. Well, except for one thing: someone was causing trouble.

Reimu gathered her gohei, needles, and amulets together and took off, Marisa not far behind her. A thought occurred to Marisa as they had begun their journey, and they parted ways, the witch seeming to head to her home in the Forest of Magic for some reason.

Reimu sighed as she flew off in a seemingly random direction, trusting her intuition to lead her to the proper place. The fairies and minor youkai seemed to be attracted to the mist, as they were out in full force this evening. "You know, I usually like the night, but I'll be honest, this one isn't one of them."

"You shouldn't go wandering at night." Reimu's head snapped up. "A wild youkai might just eat you."

There, a dozen meter ahead was a… blob of darkness. Suddenly the blob started receding and in its place was a young looking blond girl wearing a white shirt with a black vest over it and a black skirt; in her hair was a small charm-like red ribbon. She was holding both arms out to either side.

Reimu looked unimpressed. "If that's the case, what are you doing out here?"

The girl licked her lips. "Looking for a midnight snack."

"Is that so?"

She floated forward with a menacing grin. "Of course it is; don't you know? It's a youkai's job to attack humans."

"Who are you, anyways?" Reimu questioned.

"I'm Rumia; Youkai of Darkness!"

She looked like she was gathering power to start an attack when Reimu shouted, "Wait! Is this a duel?"

Rumia stopped and looked confused for a moment. "What's a duel?"

Reimu smiled. "Just say yes, Rumia."

Still a little confused, she said, "Yes Rumia."

That was it; a spell card duel. Despite her look of indifference, Reimu was actually quite excited at the prospect since it was also her first duel since implementing the system. Rumia charged up a little magic and shot it out in multicolored circles, not aiming at anything in particular; Reimu attempted to match this, but found that she wasn't able to cast a pattern. Something was preventing her from doing it, so she changed tactic and started throwing her homing amulets and needles as she did at the random fairies on the way there; she found it to actually work. Something about the rules of the duel was doing this.

Rumia was not a dumb youkai, but she was somewhat simple; she also got bored easily. After taking a few hits (some from homing shots, some from accidentally running into a needle), she pulled a small card from a pocket of her skirt and shouted, "**Moon Sign [Moonlight Ray]!**"

All of Rumia's and Reimu's bullets disappeared and Rumia started emitting wave after wave of small sized bullets in circles around her; the gaps in the bullets were staggered so that she couldn't stay in the same place all the time to avoid them, but there was plenty of space between waves that Reimu had no problems maneuvering. A pair of lasers were also fired at a wide angle, converging towards Reimu until they left a small arc directly in front of Rumia, before they disappeared and she fired them again. Again, Reimu couldn't use a firing pattern, so she too pulled a spell card with the intention of matching spell for spell.

"**Spirit Sign [Fantasy Seal]!**"

Rather than the card pattern she had imprinted into it when she made it, five colorful, glowing yin-yang orbs appeared around her and rushed up to Rumia, each one exploding in turn. This canceled her spell, causing her to back up a little in mid air. She didn't appear to be mad or anything; she simply went back to a normal pattern. Reimu was a little winded, however; it seems using a spell card like that actually took energy to use.

The new attack was actually many different kinds of attacks; some were long streams of bullets that were directly aimed, some were in randomly spaced out circles. Yet again Reimu found herself unable to cast about a pattern and was forced to use a more direct form of attack. The Darkness Youkai seemed almost lazy as she barely moved out of the way of the attacks (and in most cases, didn't move at all). A minute into this attack saw her once again holding a card out in front of her; "**Night Sign [Night Bird]!**"

Rumia began firing opposing arcs of bullets, three rows deep. There was barely room to get between columns of bullets, and sometimes not even that where the pattern overlapped in places. It took some fancy flying to avoid getting hit, and a few times the bullets seemed to graze a little too close for comfort. Fortunately, Rumia didn't move too much, and Reimu was able to break the spell card without taking a hit.

The girl was still able, however, and she immediately set into a pattern with a stream of bullets on one side and several close together but randomly aimed lasers on the other. Reimu found there to be a gap in the laser net in line-of-sight in front of her opponent and opted to reside there while firing away with her own danmaku. When the lasers let up, a shallow arc of bullets was aimed towards her; a very tight squeeze found a gap that allowed her through. Yet another spell card was in the girl's outstretched hand. "**Darkness Sign [Demarcation]!**"

Three circles of bullets were emitted, in each row the bullets crisscrossed each other, leaving occasional gaps that could be flown through with the right timing. Reimu was so focused on finding these that she almost didn't see the other half of the card, an arc of bullets that aimed directly at her position and collapsed into a single stream. She successfully dodged one just as a second one was headed her way; through a lucky break a gap in the next circle formed right where she needed it, and she flew straight through it, grazing the second arc-stream.

She gasped as she saw a third and fourth arc form and get fired off. She didn't give herself time to panic, however, and she flew backwards in an attempt to maneuver herself in such a way that she could actually avoid taking any hits. She continued to dodge, ignoring her opponent for long enough that the spell card expired; she timed it out.

Rumia was at the extent of her magic and slumped forward while still hanging in midair. Reimu, too, was feeling a little tired, though this was likely just because of her using her spell card like she did. She dug the spell card she used out and took a good look at it; pictured on the front of it was the pattern she had imagined, so why hadn't it worked? '_Guess there's things about the spell card system even __**I**__ don't know about._'

While she was musing about this, Rumia had extended her ball of darkness and floated away. Reimu tried to find her but gave up after a minute; she had better things to do than look for a random youkai.

* * *

Marisa had indeed gone to the Forest of Magic, but she did not head home as Reimu had thought. She found herself in front of Alice's home, feeling a little pensive about what she was about to do.

'_Normally I would just bust the door down; it's what I'd do with anyone else's door._' Marisa gave it much more thought than usual. '_But I just don't want to be disrespectful… that would be a bad thing, I think._'

Marisa tried to calm her nerves, something she rarely had to do. This was proving difficult; after all, she was actually going to _knock on the door_. Steeling herself, she walked up onto the porch and rapped on the door with her knuckle.

She didn't hear any movement, but a short time later the door opened, and Marisa found herself face to face with… a doll.

"Er, uh… wait; Shanghai?" Marisa said, half in a daze.

"Is that you, Marisa?" Alice called from somewhere further in the house. "Please come in; don't mind Shanghai, I'm still getting used to controlling a larger doll from across the house."

The Shanghai doll backed up in mid air, giving Marisa the room to walk in. Alice came down from the second floor looking as she always did; something the witch could appreciate, since she rarely wore something other than her own costume. Marisa returned to her normal self and grinned. "Hi ze!"

Alice rolled her eyes; she was determined to figure out where that tic came from and maybe put a stop to it. "Welcome; to what do I owe the pleasure?"

Marisa gestured out the window. "Have you seen this weird red mist yet? It's all over the place. Me and Reimu are gonna investigate, you wanna come along?"

Alice was slightly appealed by the idea of solving an incident, but something else was bothering her such that she was disinclined from actually coming along. "I would, but the mist fascinates me; I want to try experimenting on it and see what it really is and if it can be used for anything." She tried a grin of her own, but mostly looked awkward for the effort since she wasn't used to it; or perhaps Marisa simply wasn't used to seeing others grin the way she usually did. "Thank you for the offer, though; maybe next time?"

Marisa shrugged. "Maybe; I gotta catch up to Reimu, so I'll see you later. Once this is good and solved, I'll tell you all about it, and you tell me all about your experiment!" Marisa turned around and left the house, speeding off on her broom in the direction she thought she saw Reimu going when they parted ways.

* * *

As usually happened when Reimu followed her intuition to get her where she needed to go, she had no actual idea where she was. Something felt like it had pulled her in the direction of this strange, misty lake that she didn't quite remember ever having heard about before. The air above the lake was cold, such that she was easily shivering within minutes of exposure.

The fairies and spirits were more numerous, though the danmaku was still rather sparse; Reimu found little difficulty in keeping out of the way as she traveled. In the distance was what looked like a small house, though being at a distance it was likely to actually be quite massive. In the not-so-distance was a lone figure; the other enemies had cleared away, leaving just this one.

She was larger than the other fairies, but only slightly; she differed from them by only having a single pair of golden wings (instead of the double pair of transparent-white wings that normal fairies would have). She wasn't making any threatening moves, so Reimu asked, "Who are you supposed to be?"

She just floated there occasionally flapping her wings. "Oh, I'm just a greater fairy."

"Greater fairy?" Reimu mused. "So I guess you're strong, huh?"

Her eyes widened. "Oh no, I'm not strong at all! Definitely not strong."

This response piqued Reimu's interest. "Have you any spell cards?" She shook her head. "Excellent."

Reimu flew directly towards her opponent, who promptly materialized a spiral of kunai bullets around her, four rows deep, before teleporting a short distance away. Reimu silently cursed and charged through the corridor gap in the spiral, intending to change direction and get close again. Before she could do that, however, another spiral formed and fired, causing her to once again need to swerve into a gap that was left in the pattern. The fairy teleported again, but miscalculated and wound up right next to Reimu.

Reimu smiled to herself and pulled out a card, shouting, "**Dream Sign [Evil Sealing Circle]!**" The area immediately around her lit up with a magic circle, which expanded outward for some distance. The greater fairy, having been caught in the epicenter, was quickly drained and winked out of existence like every other fairy out there.

Reimu once again started to wonder what was causing the spell cards to act the way they were, but was cut off as wave after wave of spirits, wandering minor youkai, charged towards her. This type never fired danmaku, but were incredibly fast, and if they passed through you they drained a portion of your magic, leaving you winded, or worse. Eventually some more fairies had begun to show up, but they weren't given the chance to do anything, mostly due to the screaming bullet that charged through, hakkero brandished, and riding her broom like a surfboard.

She came to a sudden halt after clearing them off, still standing upright as if it were the thing to do. Reimu slapped her forehead and sighed. "You know, even with the spell card rules, if you fall from a hundred feet in the air, you can still break your neck."

Marisa grinned. "Nah, it's okay; I can't fall off. Watch this!" To emphasize, she flew off and built up some speed, then proceeded to spin her broom around, causing her to go upside-down several times, each time remaining upright on the broom, and not even losing her hat in the process.

Reimu was prepared to respond to this but was interrupted before she could. "Hey! What are you guys doing over **my** lake?"

Another fairy was floating a short distance away; this one was slightly taller than the greater fairy from earlier, and was dressed in a long, deep blue dress and a matching ribbon in her light blue hair. Rather than typical fairy wings, or even those of the previously fought fairy, this one had wings that looked like six shards of ice, three to a side. Marisa gawked at the intrusion and said, "I'm sorry; didn't know this was restricted airspace."

The fairy looked confused at this. She said, "I'm not entirely sure what that means, but if you don't leave, you're going to regret it!"

Marisa looked back at Reimu; she shrugged and said, "You can have her; I've already taken out two."

With a predatory grin, Marisa turned to face her opponent. "Was that a challenge, little ice fairy?"

The fairy puffed out her chest and put her hands on her hips. "It sure was! After all, I **am** the strongest fairy in all of Gensokyo!"

Reimu giggled as she backed away to give the combatants some room. The ice fairy wasted no time in attacking, sending out a fat arrow formation of ice bullets aimed towards Marisa; the spaces within the arrow widened as it traveled, and Marisa found plenty of room to dodge around. This was fired three times, followed by a ring of bullets spreading out from around her opponent, then two aimed streams of ice bullets that formed as an oval shape and twisted in the middle, giving the look of a figure eight. Marisa didn't question it when the only shots she could toss out was a basic stream of stars, missiles, and lasers. After taking a few hits, the fairy shouted, "Now face the wrath of Cirno!" She held out a card. "**Ice Sign [Icicle Fall]!**"

To either side of her, a loose barrage of ice bullets in three distinct rows started coming down, converging towards Marisa, no matter where she was. As she tried to get closer, Cirno would shoot five basic danmaku bullets in a widespread arc. Being relatively quick and having such a large amount of space to move about, Marisa had no trouble dodging the attack, and even took some sport in grazing as close as she could. She continued to press her attack and soon the spell was defeated.

Cirno wasted no time, though, and busted out another spell card immediately after that. "**Hail Sign [Hailstorm]!**" Radiating out of the fairy was a veritable barrage of ice bullets. '_Straight, right-to-left, and left-to-right; this shouldn't be difficult to get through._' Marisa thought. She stayed relatively still in the air while watching for incoming danmaku. So hard was her concentration that she didn't even bother attacking, preferring to wait out the duration of the spell. Sure enough, a short time later the spell timed out and she was left with a mostly empty field of vision.

Again, Marisa didn't question when this happened; she was of the opinion that during a battle you had to shoot first and ask questions later. The new pattern by the fairy was slightly dense with bullets being rapid fired in a circle around her, with three separate aimed laser bursts being fired all in a row, with a short time between them occurring; she had the bad habit of moving to directly in front of where Marisa would choose to dodge to to get by the lasers, so this phase didn't last very long at all. Yet another spell card was in her hands as she shouted, "**Freeze Sign [Perfect Freeze]!**"

All around her in chaotic fashion many bullets were shot; after a certain density was reached she froze them in place. At this point she moved about a little, shooting a wide arc of bullets in which the middle stream was aimed, after which she would unfreeze the rest of the bullets where they would move in what appeared to be random directions while shooting randomly all over again. This pattern was repetitive, but somewhat predictable, and with the frozen bullets and whatnot Marisa had no troubles keeping out of danger.

Accompanying a loud pop signifying the end of that spell card was one last declaration: Cirno looked a little winded, but continued anyways. "**Snow Sign [Diamond Blizzard]!**"

Suddenly, hundreds of ice bullets filled Marisa's vision, all traveling in random directions. Goggling at the sight, Marisa said, "Screw this!" She pulled out her mini-hakkero and a spell card and shouted, "**Love Sign [Master Spark]!**" The end of the block of wood she was holding glowed fiercely just before emitting a very wide and colorful laser which obliterated the opposition's bullets and engulfed the fairy. A few seconds later Cirno was nowhere to be found.

Reimu floated back up to where Marisa was with her arms crossed and a smirk; the hakkero had been put away and she was one again sitting on her broom. Marisa turned to regard her companion and asked, "So where are we goin', anyways?"

Reimu tilted her head towards the far side of the lake. "There's a house there; I think they are at fault."

Marisa squinted and said, "Alright, let's go!" She sped off, forcing Reimu to follow.

A short time later, in the same location that the fight had just taken place in, a sucking sound could be heard, and a moment later Cirno was once again floating there. "Aww, no fair!" She pouted to no one in particular. Sulking off, she rubbed the back of her head and said, "Man, that hurt…"

* * *

The house they had seen was much further inland than either of them had realized, and there was a sizable tract of land to traverse on the way; the sky had seemingly brightened, though this was an effect of moonlight showing through the mist, tinting everything a dark red color. By the time Reimu had caught up to Marisa, she found the witch bogged down by a swarm of fairies that were aiming streams of kunai bullets at her, with others showering her with basic danmaku in seemingly random bursts.

Choosing to ignore this, Reimu rushed forward a ways only to encounter another person; she was tall, even taller than Mima, and possibly the tallest person she had ever met. The girl had long red hair with twin braids to either side of her face and was wearing a green vest over a white blouse, a green skirt, and had a green cap on; the cap had a star with a symbol that Reimu didn't recognize. Her arms were crossed in front of her, and she seemed to radiate an aura of strength that was almost unheard of in Gensokyo.

The girl inclined her head. "State your business." She spoke with a slight accent that once again Reimu failed to recognize.

Reimu feigned indifference. "I'm just passing through." She then got an idea and decided to ask a question. "You don't live in that house over there, do you?"

She remained unmoving. "Are you expected at the mansion?"

Reimu raised an eyebrow. "Pretty small for a mansion, isn't it?"

"I'll take that as a no."

The girl appeared to explode with danmaku, a random spray of bullets were emitted as she moved, then seemed to teleport a few times, spraying a circle of different shaped bullets at each stop; Reimu could see, though, that she still seemed to carry momentum, indicative of not teleportation, but simply incredibly fast movement. Reimu started to draw some conclusions about the way that spell card duels had to be carried out once she again failed to cast a pattern in retaliation. She was just getting used to dodging the pattern when a card suddenly appeared in her opposition's hand. "**Flower Sign [Selaginella 9]!**"

Multicolored bullets bloomed around her like a massive, six-petal flower. Reimu stayed still and examined the pattern for a moment; the bullets were radiating in circles around her, and were crisscrossing as they approached. She found that it only required very small movements to graze past, allowing her to concentrate on keeping up a steady stream of needles and ofuda. In little time the magic of the spell was depleted; the girl looked ready to attack again just as Marisa came upon the scene, charging in on her broom at a high speed. Reimu turned momentarily, but long enough for the girl in green to make a break for the house in the distance.

Marisa came to a stop next to her companion. "What was that about?"

Reimu shrugged. "I think she's got something to do with that house out there; she called it a mansion, though it doesn't seem to be big enough to be called that…"

The two looked to each other and nodded; determination coursed through them as they rushed forward towards their goal. More opposition as before stood in their way, and Reimu found herself boxed in. She yelled to Marisa, "Go on ahead! I'll catch up in a moment." Marisa waved and sped off as Reimu could be heard shouting, "**Spirit Sign [Fantasy Seal]!**"

A few more spirits and fairies were in the way, but Marisa had no particular problems taking care of those; the house was looming closer, and an imposing gate could be seen. Floating a short distance away was Reimu's previous opponent, looking a little winded, but otherwise composed. She noticed Marisa and… smiled. "Thanks for that back there."

Marisa was a little confused by this, but decided to go with it. "Sure thing; who are you, anyways?"

She straightened herself before bowing. "My name is Hong Meiling, Gate Guard for the Scarlet Devil Mansion."

Amused, Marisa reciprocated the gesture. "Marisa Karisame, Ordinary Witch at your service."

She didn't get the chance to press the conversation as Reimu came floating in; when she stopped next to the witch, Hong's mouth hung open and she pointed. "Wait… you two are friends?"

They both grinned back. "Of course, ze! We're trying to find the source of this weird mist!"

Hong's eyes widened at the realization, and she steeled herself, preparing to attack once again. She said, "I'll not let you near the mistress."

Marisa floated up to the same level as the gate guard. "Bring it on, China-girl."

Anger flashed in her eyes as she unleashed a spiral of bullets which charged in Marisa's general direction. After releasing it she would move and do it again; Marisa found that there was a decent sized gap in the attack with which she could get through with each wave. In a flash of color, a shout could be heard; "**Rainbow Sign [Wind Chime of Colorful Rainbow]!**"

Similar to before many spirals of bullets formed around Hong, though they were many colored and the actual spirals were much more numerous; thin corridors could be found, and Marisa found herself taking more time to navigate than to actually attack. She wasn't happy with this, though, and grabbed a card from her skirt. "**Magic Sign [Stardust Reverie]!**" Several very large stars, each a different color, flew out of Marisa in all directions, erasing the bullets and giving Marisa a clear path forward to attack.

With a soft crack the spell dissipated. Several fairies appeared behind Hong and began firing streams of kunai bullets; some were aimed and others were not. The Chinese girl was floating almost lazily around the battlefield emitting a random dispersal of danmaku in an almost casual manner; at times it would be a circle pattern three rows deep, but there were large gaps between the bullets. With so much room to maneuver, Marisa found no difficulty pressing her own attack.

With little ceremony another spell card was declared. "**Illusion Sign [Flower Imaginary Dream Vine]!**" All around her, danmaku was being generated; at first it looked random, but a pattern emerged where Marisa could find certain safe spots. After releasing one wave, Hong would move to a new location to start again where the last one left had left off; Marisa did her best to attempt to find a spot where she could attack from, and eventually managed to succeed.

A new non-spell card pattern started in which she shot out a massive circle of blue kunai bullets which would collapse back towards her and spiral out in one direction while she shot out red kunai which did the same, only spiraling in the opposite direction; she followed this with a random scattering of bullets designed to catch Marisa off guard. Fortunately Marisa was very good at quickly streaming these and was able to get through the spirals in time to notice the other attack and avoid it.

Another few seconds of Marisa's attack brought yet another spell card out of the girl. "**Colorful Sign [Colorful Light Chaotic Dance]!**" A spiral of colorful bullets appeared and charged Marisa, followed immediately by a random scattering of the same type of bullets. Despite being called chaotic there was a definite pattern to it all even with the extra scattering, which Marisa took advantage of. A few minutes of pressed attack saw a break in the spell; Hong was panting hard, but wasn't willing to give up just yet.

One last spell card was in her hands. With a flourish she called out, "**Colorful Sign [Extreme Color Typhoon]!**" All at once, thousands of multicolored danmaku exploded from around Meiling going in random directions around her. At first Marisa was thinking this would be like her fight against Cirno where she tried something similar to this, but where the ice fairy was just being lazy and tossing ice about randomly, Hong Meiling almost seemed to be precisely coordinating the bullets to overlap in ways that prevented the witch from being capable of counterattack. Due to having used a spell card earlier in the fight, Marisa didn't have the strength to use another one, and so simply concentrated on dodging, willing to wait out the spell this time.

In what seemed like many long minutes, the effect wore off, and the gate guard was left looking thoroughly exhausted. The two incident solvers started to pass her by when she said to them, "Don't step one foot in the mansion."

Marisa turned back to her incredulously. "I don't think you're in any position to make demands."

She looked up at them and said, "Not that; just keep flying once you're inside."

They looked at her, and then to each other. Shrugging, they flew over the gate up to the front door, which Marisa blasted open with an illusion laser before they flew on inside.

* * *

Heeding the gate guard's advice, the two continued to stay afloat as they entered the "mansion." From the outside it looked like a moderately sized house with no windows and few doors, but once they were inside, the main hall was easily as large as the house itself, if not larger.

Marisa's eyes bulged at the sight; Reimu remained indifferent, as if it was no special feat to have something like this. She saw Marisa was completely entranced and decided to catch the girl off guard. "So… Love Sign, eh? What's that about?"

Marisa was shaken from her reverie by the unexpected question. "I um… that is, I read once that love was supposed to be the ultimate magic, having more power than anything else." She held up her left arm and gripped her bicep with the other hand; she made a wish that Reimu would accept the gesture and leave it at that.

No such luck. "Oh really? And _where_ does this power really come from, I wonder?" Reimu had to stifle giggles from watching the usually easygoing and collected girl turn a deep red and get incredibly flustered.

Marisa stopped her broom, causing the Shrine Maiden to have to turn around. The witch said, "It's not funny, ze; it's not my fault we've only known each other a few months such that it would be really awkward to say anything right now…"

It was a rare moment of seriousness for the girl, which Reimu took special note of. Scouring recent memory, a name that she couldn't put to a face popped up a few times from conversations with Marisa; she decided to take a chance, being very sure she was right. "Alice, huh?"

Marisa sighed. "You know I can't lie to you, at least not successfully; I just… need to give it some time before coming forward. She's still new, you know? Still learning about her surroundings, and while we're friends, we're just not that close, yet." She shook her head and looked back up at her companion, grinning. "Anyways, what's up with this place? It's bigger in the inside than it is on the outside."

Reimu stared at the witch. "That was sudden."

Marisa shrugged. "Get used to it."

"Hmmm…" Reimu gave the issue some thought. "Since this place is probably massive, maybe we should split up?"

Marisa nodded. "Sounds good to me." She looked around the great hall and found a large set of double doors tucked into a corner. "That place looks interesting; I'll head in there. Catch you later, ze!" She sped off towards the doors, leaving Reimu to have to decide which way to go.

"I guess upstairs is as good as anywhere." Keeping careful to not touch the ground, she floated towards the long central staircase.

* * *

Marisa had opened the doors and flew straight in, completely unprepared for what she saw: she seemed to be flying over what appeared to be a balcony, overlooking an absolutely gigantic library. To her right was a staircase leading down into the bowels of the place, and the actual ground floor of the place appeared to be four or five stories down.

Marisa's eyes sparkled at the sight; she had never seen so many books in one place. As thoughts of grand larceny popped into her head, the realization occurred to her that she had no means of carrying large numbers of books, let alone finding an escape route with them in tow; she looked about and noticed that like the outside of the house indicated there were no windows to be found. The library was dimly lit with candles, but the number of them would make it difficult to see anything, let alone read by.

Making the decision to return later with the means of her secondary trade, she started forward into the library, deciding to at least browse the titles to see if these were actually worth another trip. She was immediately set upon by minor youkai and fairies that were dressed in what could only be maid uniforms. Sometimes they fired wide aimed arcs of bullets, other times they would set traps that sprayed kunai bullets at random. The density of opposition and bullets was staggering, but Marisa paid it no mind; she found if she thought about it she was more likely to get hurt.

After a point, the regular enemies cleared off and a number of books started appearing on their own, hanging in midair and firing multiple bullet sizes all around them in bursts, which continued in the direction they were fired; Marisa counted six of these enchanted reading materials, and while she wanted to shoot them out of the sky, she found them boxing her in away from them with the sheer number of bullets they fired.

All at once they all disappeared and Marisa found herself face to face with a person; she was not overly tall, but she had longish red hair with a pair of small black wings coming out of her head. She wore a white dress shirt with a black vest and black tie, and a black skirt; she appeared to be wearing spectacles, something Marisa had only ever seen Rinnosuke do. The girl stared at Marisa; "Who are you?"

Marisa grinned and said, "Exterminator; I heard you have a fairy infestation. Who are you?"

The girl appeared quite surprised. "Fairy infestation? Those are the maids for the mansion! They may not hardly work, but they're still employed here!" She seemed to be forgetting something.

Marisa chose to not be fazed by this. "Oh, well in that case, I'll stop. You'll be getting my bill in the mail shortly, ze."

Marisa was highly amused when the poor girl got incredibly flustered at the proclamation. "What? Oh, but I don't have any money to pay for that…"

Feeling a little sorry for the girl (for reasons she really couldn't explain), Marisa said, "Well hey, we'll forget the bill if you just tell me your name."

"My name?" This seemed to cause a small internal struggle within the girl. "I'm just a little devil helping the head librarian here."

Marisa frowned, disappointed. "Oh, just a small fry, then."

The little devil didn't seem to like that last statement, as she emitted a wide spiral of large, bubble like danmaku, following it up with a random spray of kunai bullets. Marisa started to dodge and weave when she noticed that her opponent never moved; this was all the advantage she needed. A short time later, the little devil had sulked off, defeated.

'_That was easy,_' Marisa thought, '_time to browse some more._' She never got the chance, as she was once again beset by the fairy maids and other small youkai. They were still using the same tricks as last time with one exception; three fairy maids had appeared and began firing a very fast spiral pattern all around them, which overlapped and left very little room to maneuver. She waited these ones out, only to find that two more were willing to attack in the same way, each one paired with two of those danmaku firing books.

When this was all over, Marisa mused to herself, "Gee, with all this going on here, you'd think they didn't want me in here."

"Precisely the point."

Marisa flew around in a circle before noticing the origin of the voice; floating a short distance away was a short girl in what looked like a night robe and cap. She had purple hair and eyes, with blue and lavender ribbons adorning her hair; The robe and cap were a light, very nearly pink color, and she seemed to be carrying a thick book.

Marisa scrutinized the figure before her. "Oh, you must be that head librarian the little devil mentioned."

The girl looked perturbed at this statement. "I am Patchouli Knowledge, master of this Voile Library, head librarian of the Scarlet Devil Mansion." Marisa looked prepared to introduce herself before Patchouli interrupted her. "And you are a black and white rat." She opened her book and held it close in front of her face. "Let's see how to remove unwanted vermin."

Immediately, four lasers appeared around the librarian, each aimed like compass points, and did a quarter-circle anti-clockwise, then another clockwise. After the lasers dissipated, she moved a little and released several bursts of danmaku in circles around her; she followed this up with another set of lasers moving clockwise this time accompanied by bullets being emitted from the base of the lasers in the same general direction as the lasers were aimed. After the lasers dissipated again, she fired off more of them from the opposite direction moving anti-clockwise once again.

This pattern repeated a few times while Marisa got used to it; her own attack was intermittent at best, since her opposition was much more powerful than she had anticipated. Each new laser attack started from the same direction as the second iteration of the previous attack, which allowed Marisa to fall into a comfortable pattern. Patchouli appeared to reach into the book; a spell card was in her hand. She calmly recited, "**Earth Sign [Rage Trilithon High Level].**"

In an arc directly in front of her, hundreds of yellow bullets were emitted and stopped momentarily. Once they started moving again, they either flew in Marisa's general direction, or as some of them did they curved back behind the librarian. There was a distinct opposing double spiral to the attack, and Marisa took advantage of her recent experience with this kind of pattern, moving only as much as she needed to and grazing close while pressing her own attack, deciding to focus on using her illusion laser, rather than magic missiles or other types of shots.

The spell card broke and Patchouli went back to the rotating laser attack; this time it was a little faster and the two beams almost seemed to cross, despite them being two separate attacks. She followed this up with a nine-way stream of bullets that fired in rapid succession; the lasers appeared again, this time accompanied by danmaku that like last time was emitted from the base of the lasers. These shots were aimed, though, and made avoiding both them and the lasers a very tricky piece of timing.

The rapidity of the attack also made for it to be quickly dispelled, as a new card was declared. "**Metal Sign [Silver Dragon].**" This pattern saw a sparse scattering of bullets emitted all around which came to a sudden halt and then shifted to seemingly _fall_ towards Marisa. There were two speeds to the bullets, fast and kind of not so fast, but considering Marisa was fast herself, she had little difficulty with this particular spell.

No time was wasted after breaking through the previous card. "**Earth & Metal Sign [Emerald Megalith].**" Arcs of massive green bubble danmaku were fired, aimed at Marisa, and were followed by a scattering of smaller bullets which traveled in random directions. Marisa found herself hard pressed to actually avoid these shots, and considered breaking out a spell card of her own, but decided that the delay in actually declaring one would probably cause her to get hit before she could actually do it. She instead concentrated on avoiding all of the shots and timing out the card.

This was a very time intensive thing to do, but it paid off in the end. Patchouli looked a little like she was struggling to breathe at this point, but pulled yet another card anyways. "**Water & Wood Sign [Water Elf].**" A combination of circles of mid-sized bullets and arcs of larger bullets filled the battlefield at relatively high speeds; the arcs appeared to be aimed, which actually suited Marisa, since it meant if she stayed in constant motion she could easily get around them. The density of this attack was such that there was actually more room to maneuver; it helped when there wasn't any random bullets to avoid.

A few minutes more of her attack saw the librarian dispelling her own card, only to pull _another one_. Marisa decided that this was probably going to be her last, as she had looked ragged towards the end there. "**Metal & Water Sign [Mercury Poison].**" Alternating rings of blue and yellow bullets flew out of her, pairs of bullets seemingly clustering together along the rings; from time to time the pairs would separate, leaving single hanging bullets in places that used to contain gaps. There were still corridors, even though the two different colored rings were turning in opposite directions from each other. Deciding at this point that a spell card would be a waste of energy, Marisa rode out the waves of danmaku, attacking when viable. Soon, in a massive magical explosion, Patchouli was left looking well too weak to continue fighting back.

She coughed and wheezed, but Marisa was too busy reading titles to pay her any mind. Sighing internally, Patchouli slowly floated off to find somewhere to get some rest; she'd find a way to deal with the rat when she was feeling better.

* * *

Reimu found herself facing a long hallway… make that, a _very_ long hallway. Something was obviously not right about this, as she couldn't see the far end at all; it just kind of stretched to eternity it looked like. Everything about this place was red, from the walls and ceiling, to the gold trimmed carpeting. She felt dizzy and slightly overwhelmed, but shook her head and told herself it was caused by whatever strange magic made the whole house possible.

She started to fly forward before being accosted by fairies, only instead of simply being in plain dresses these appeared to be dressed as maids. They would fire massive rings of bullets at times, and others would have lines of them streaming across her field of vision spraying wide arcs of bullets directly in front of them. Reimu bobbed and weaved as best as she could, eliminating as many of the pests as she could.

After what had felt like an incredibly long time, the fairies all scattered as if afraid of something. Reimu looked around in confusion but couldn't find a reason for it, when suddenly a person appeared in front of her. The person spoke with a calm but forceful tone. "Stop killing the cleaning staff."

The person was a somewhat tall girl (though not nearly as tall as that Meiling person); she had silver hair with a pair of braids to either side of her face and tied with green ribbons, red eyes, and was wearing a blue and white maid's uniform. In each hand was a set of knives.

Reimu brought her hands in front of her, saying, "Hey it was self defense; they attacked me first."

"You are an intruder; all intruders are attacked on sight."

With that declaration she threw an arc of knives followed by an arc of kunai; the knives were in long streams with much space in between, while the kunai were in a wider formation with more space between rows, but not as many rows deep. Reimu streamed the kunai in each corridor to get through, while pressing an attack of her own that soon bore fruit. The maid suddenly had a card in her hand; "**Strange Art [Illusional Misdirection].**"

She moved horizontally, emitting rings of kunai bullets; Reimu tried to move to intercept, but the next thing she knew, her opponent was on the other side of the field tossing out long streams of knives. Reimu was so surprised by this that she almost failed to notice that some of the kunai streams had _bounced_ off of the wall and were headed back in her direction. She took a moment to reorient herself in relation to the bullet pattern, then figured it to be best to concentrate solely on dodging while tossing homing amulets in the hopes of wearing her down slowly. This strategy succeeded after a short time, and the next thing she knew the maid was nowhere to be found.

While confused as what just happened, Reimu pressed it to the back of her mind; there were obviously more important things to attend to. She took the fact that she had been attacked as a good sign that this was the right direction and pressed forward; she was rewarded by a hoard of fairy maids throwing several different kinds of bullets at her, some of them aimed at her, some not. This was kept up for some time before they seemed to switch tactics and instead attacked using rapidly expanding danmaku rings, being simultaneously fired by pairs of fairies on mirrored sides of the corridor. Safe spots were difficult to find, but with some tight squeezes Reimu managed to wait out the assault.

A few moments of flying later found the maid directly in front of her again. "Persistent, aren't you? I'll not let you through to the mistress, though." Without waiting for a response, she activated a magic seal, releasing eight smaller magic seals around her; each one fired rows of bullets in all directions while the maid herself started tossing knives in circles around herself. As the seals dissipated and the bullets disappeared she tossed out several streams of knives around her, with the space directly in front of her inaccessible and corridors available between the other columns. After this, she would repeat the pattern. Reimu concentrated fire on her while the first part of the pattern charged up, and concentrated on dodging otherwise. After a few minutes, the maid declared her first spell card; "**Illusion Ghost [Jack the Ludo Bile].**"

She gathered energy, released a spray of giant red bubble bullets, and partway through the attack caused something very strange to happen: all at once, hundreds of knives appeared in a wide arc all around Reimu, each location containing knives pointed in three different directions, one of which was aimed straight at the Shrine Maiden. They started moving in the direction they indicated, forcing Reimu to make a quick decision on where to go to get out of the way. In the end, she wound up grazing very close to the ones that were aimed at her, which amazingly enough was out of the way of the larger bullets. This repeated several times while Reimu kept up her own attack. The telltale crack of magic indicated the end of that spell card.

As before, a magic circle appeared behind her opponent, only this one spawned only four other smaller seals; each one fired a row of rapidly moving kunai which bounced off of the walls and caused general chaos on the battlefield. The maid added to this chaos by tossing a dispersal of knives all about in loose ring formations. After dodging about for a period of time, another spell card was held up by the maid; "**Illusion World [The World].**"

Again she gathered energy and all at once emitted a large ring of fire bullets; they stopped at the same moment that again hundreds of knives appeared all at once in an arc around Reimu, each pointing a different direction. In the next instant they all started moving, the knives in the directions they were pointing and the fire in random directions. This was even more chaotic than the last non-spell card, but the randomness also left corridor areas of space that Reimu barely managed to see in time to duck in to. She continued to attack, relying on homing amulets as needed, until the magic broke, leaving a winded looking service worker.

She wasn't finished, of course, and started tossing spirals of knives about; the ones that hit the walls bounced at a reciprocal angle, and she kept tossing more knives at regular intervals. Soon knives were crisscrossing at all angles, leaving Reimu with no choice but to concentrate on dodging. This was proving to time consuming, though, so she sought to clear a little space; pulling a card from her skirt, she declared, "**Dream Sign [Evil Sealing Circle]!**" Radiating out from around her was a magical seal, and as it expanded it dispelled all of the knives, leaving her clear to rush forward and press a stream of needles at her opponent, forcing her to declare a card of her own.

"**Maid's Secret Skill [Killing Doll].**" She released a large spiral of blue knives followed by streams of red knives in all directions; after reaching a certain point, many green knives appeared, causing a chaotic flurry of knives in all directions. It was all Reimu could to keep from getting skewered herself. She chose to wait this spell out, given the unpredictability of the extra third layer of danmaku, and was eventually rewarded for her efforts; after a magical explosion, all of the knives had disappeared, and the maid was nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly, the corridor didn't seem quite so long, and a single open door could be seen at the end; smiling to herself, Reimu took a moment to catch her breath before continuing on.

* * *

'_Now this is just really weird._' Reimu thought. Through the door at the end of the corridor was a small room that didn't appear to have a ceiling; it was dark, as there were no candles to be found, but a distant point of light could be seen from above. Reimu shrugged and started flying upwards.

It wasn't long before she was set upon by many minor youkai, some of which fired small bullets at her, some of which emitted danmaku as they popped from taking a hit from her ofuda and needles; it was a little hectic, but not unmanageable. After these some fairies showed up and sprayed some mirrored rings of bullets, but again it wasn't enough to make her do more than idly graze the incoming shots. That's when the maid appeared again.

Reimu sighed. "Haven't you had enough?"

Her opponent shook her head. "I said you aren't permitted to see the mistress!" She immediately followed this declaration by rapidly throwing streams of knives in a wide arc, leaving large corridors of space between the columns; this was followed by a smaller arc of kunai bullets that halted after being thrown, then changed directions suddenly and kept on going at high speeds, making Reimu have to think even more quickly than before. The danger was high, but she somehow survived, managing to so narrowly avoid impalement that it made her sick to think about it. The maid wasn't through yet, of course; "**Strange Art [Eternal Meek].**"

In contrast to every other spell and pattern that the maid had put out before, this spell was all about desperation; it emitted regular danmaku bullets in rapid fire all around her in random directions. Reimu could tell that there was too much power being put into it, and it was only a matter of time before that ran out; she waited for the inevitable.

That came in mere seconds, and once again the maid was gone in a flash of light and sound. Again Reimu found she needed to catch her breath, but she knew she was running out of time, too; this "Mistress" that everyone seems so keen to protect had to be right around the corner.

Sure enough, as Reimu continued to fly higher and higher, she came to what seemed to be an opening; there she could see that this tower stretched high above the mist that covered Gensokyo, and looming above was a moon the color of blood. Silhouetted by the moon was a small figure; a person that seemed to have bat wings. As the person descended, Reimu could better make out the person's features: it was a girl that looked to be about eleven years old; she was short with light blue hair, wearing a pale pink dress and hat that were both adorned with red ribbons. On her back were wings like those of a bat, the insides of which were white in color. The girl narrowed her eyes at the intruder. "So the Shrine Maiden of Gensokyo has deigned to show herself before the Scarlet Devil. You defeated Sakuya; you must be strong."

Reimu shrugged. "Was that the maid I passed by on the way here? She was kind of rude; she didn't even introduce herself before trying to kill me."

The Scarlet Devil smirked. "Then that means she was doing her job. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, young miko?"

Reimu gestured down to the mist. "You caused this! Remove this mist!"

The girl chuckled. "No. That mist will let me walk about whenever I want, instead of just during the night. I think I rather like it where it's at."

"Walk about…" Reimu mused. "Wait… you're a vampire?"

She bared her fangs. "Why yes, I am!"

While this surprised the Shrine Maiden, this didn't change her course of action. "If you refuse to remove this mist, I will punish you!"

The vampire girl cackled with all the evil she could muster. "Punish me? I think not, for I, Remilia Scarlet, have already fated you to die!" This statement was punctuated by a large number of red bubble bullets, followed by spirals of mid-sized bullets and short arcs of smaller bullets, all being fired at once. After a few moments of dodging that, Reimu noticed a pause in the attack, in which she rushed forward and released a flurry of needles, prompting Remilia to draw her first spell card. "**Divine Punishment [Young Demon Lord]!**"

She gathered energy and fired several lasers out of her at all angles; at a certain point around her, those lasers would pass through an energy field which would bend a portion of the laser, effectively boxing Reimu into a small space. All while this was happening, the vampire shot a scattering of bubble and regular danmaku in a ring around her, forcing Reimu to dodge within a very small enclosed space. She sought out locations that gave her the ability to fire back, however, and soon overloaded the card, forcing it to break.

Next, the Scarlet Devil started aiming her bubble bullets directly at the Shrine Maiden, trailing progressively smaller bullets; Reimu made sure to move out of the way when she noticed she was being do blatantly targeted. Next that same pattern of bullets was sprayed in a wide arc around going clockwise; a small gap was available between these shots, which Reimu made sure to take advantage of. The same pattern was repeated, only going anti-clockwise. With a pattern this simple to predict, Reimu wasted no time in bringing out Remilia's next spell card; "**Hell Sign [Mountain of a Thousand Needles]!**"

Two opposing spirals of scarlet knives were shot out, followed by a large ring of basic red bullets; after the knives circled for a time, they flew off in streaming columns, while the bullets from the ring bounced off of invisible walls, even one directly behind Remilia. This caused several crisscrossing columns of bullets which left few overlapping corridors with which to ride out the attack. The pattern kept repeating, adding more and more to the field and clouding her vision such that even though she continued firing her counter attack, she wasn't sure she was hitting anything; still, through some miracle, or perhaps homing amulets, the spell ended.

Wasting no time, the vampire started throw rapid spirals of red knives in two row deep arms around her. Fortunately for Reimu the corridors of space were aligned pretty well, and it required very little movement for each wave of the attack. The second round spun anti-clockwise and consisted of blue knives, but more or less was defeated the same way. After three rounds, Remilia had another card ready; "**God Art [Vampire Illusion]!**"

In a wide arc several bubble bullets were shot out, a line of smaller danmaku was left in their wake; another wave was emitted, and the previous bullet wake started to move, as if being distorted by the new danmaku. The lines all seemed to collapse on a certain point before homing into Reimu's current position; between avoiding the larger arc and the now collapsing streams, Reimu was hard pressed to actually try to attack. Concentrating solely on dodging, she counted the seconds before the card finally timed out, dispersing all of the bullets on the field.

Only Reimu and Remilia were left on the field at that point; all of a sudden the vampire turned into dozens of bats and scattered about the field, causing her to flinch at the ones that flew towards her; at the same time as that happened, a spray of danmaku came out of her previous position and started falling towards the Shrine Maiden; she recovered just in time to see this and graze all of the approaching bullets. Remilia appeared in front of her again, and once again turned into the bats; Reimu was expecting this this time, and wasn't as effected by it. This turned out to be a very good thing, as extremely rapid fire bubble bullets in a wide arc started aiming directly for her; there was barely enough room to squeeze between them.

Remilia was once again standing before Reimu; before she could do that again, Reimu tossed a very carefully aimed needle at her and hit her squarely in the forehead. Perturbed by this, another spell card was in her hand; "**Scarlet Sign [Scarlet Meister]!**" A gathering of energy, and three giant bubble bullets were shot directly at Reimu, who got out of the way; smaller danmaku trailed as was seen in an earlier pattern. The difference, however, was that this time the exact same bullets-with-smaller-bullet-wake was fired several times around the vampire in a clockwise circle, followed by the exact same thing in an anti-clockwise circle. The larger bullets were easy to get around, but this left Reimu in the path of the smaller ones, which she had to graze close to to get past. There was room to attack, which Reimu took advantage of as much as she could. In a short time, she defeated the spell card.

Remilia looked angry, if not tired, and she pulled out one last spell card; "**[Scarlet Gensokyo]!**" A ring of purplish bubbles shot out in a wide spiral around the Scarlet Devil, leaving a trail of danmaku that hung in the air; as each new spiral was emited, the hanging bullets started moving in random directions, while new streams of the bullet wake were deposited.

Remilia kept adding more and more chaos to the battlefield, which Reimu finally got tired of; she pulled out a spell card and shouted, "**Spirit Sign [Fantasy Seal]!**" Five multicolored glowing yin-yang orbs flew out of Reimu and homed in on the vampire, taking out the intervening bullets in the process; as they approached, though, Remilia transformed into a bat. The orbs exploded one by one, but after it was all said and done, Remilia returned to form looking no worse for wear. Cursing as the vampire laughed, Reimu pulled out all the stops in her own attack, getting a little closer due to the dispersed bullet field left by her own spell card, and released as many ofuda and needles as she could in a short time.

Remilia buckled under the strain, and in a massive explosion was left floating in a empty field, panting and looking miserable for the effort. Reimu, too, was out of breath, but paid that no attention as she watched the color of the moon return to normal; as she looked outside she could see the mist dispersing. Gensokyo was returning to normal.

The vampire girl, who was so confident that she was going to win, was now in tears; she truly looked to only be eleven now. Reimu floated up to her and heard her saying, "It's not fair… everyone who walks in this mansion is subject to my power… how could this have happened…"

"Oh, we didn't walk; we flew." Reimu drew her gohei and smacked her over the head; the girl flinched at the strike. Reimu said, "Have you learned your lesson now?"

Remilia shrunk away from her just as they could hear a shout from the tower corridor. "Hey, Reimu!" Marisa came screaming up to them and stopped just before bowling over the vampire. "Oh, hey; you solved the incident."

Reimu nodded. "Find anything interesting, Marisa?"

Marisa grinned and shrugged. "Nothing you'd care about, ze; just a huge and dusty library."

Reimu sighed and placed her palm on her forehead; '_Just what we need… someplace new for Marisa to steal from._' Reimu gestured out towards nothing in particular; "Well, shall we go?"

Pumping a fist in the air Marisa sped off, bellowing out a "yahoo" at the top of her lungs. Reimu chuckled and followed after her enthusiastic friend.


End file.
